From Configuration to Design: Capturing the Intent of User-Designers
Matt Sinclair
What will designers do when everyone can be a designer?
In recent years it has been suggested that rapid manufacturing (RM) presents the possibility of unique or bespoke design, tailored to an individual’s need and wishes. It has been suggested that RM represents the next stage of mass customisation - moving from the configuration of modules to the manipulation of shape and form. Such a possibility suggests direct user interaction with the design of the product, however the specification and design of a suitable toolkit, and the new design tasks a user might be expected to undertake, have received little attention.
It is common within mass customisation literature to refer to the “user designer” or “user as designer”. Not surprisingly this attracts scepticism and anger from professional industrial designers, who see such assertions as ill-informed about what industrial design involves, whilst at the same time devaluing designers’ work. But whilst it may be untrue that users of a configuration toolkit are acting as designers, it is nonetheless apparent that they are carrying out some of the tasks, or making some of the decisions, which would otherwise fall within the designer’s sphere of influence. My research is focussed primarily on understanding which design decisions are best made by the professional designer and which decisions the user should make or influence, and where conflicts might lie with regard to safety, standards, ergonomics, taste, brand image etc. Currently I am conducting user trials to explore how users who are not trained as designers are best able to explore and communicate design intent.
My proposed paper presents a user trial of the design of a USB memory stick, and investigates this ability to explore design options and then to communicate design intent. It compares two scenarios: in the first users created a design without guidance or constraint within a specified (volume) envelope; this design was then interpreted to build a 3D CAD model. In the second users were presented with a choice of existing designs and asked to choose one; this design was then manipulated by the CAD operator to incorporate the user’s desired changes. In both cases an iterative design tool (Genoform) was used to suggest alternatives to the user’s chosen design. The paper concludes by making recommendations for an approach which is best able to capture the intent of users with differing needs and abilities.