The Future of Personal Fabrication Technology

An exploration by design students of EMSE, Brunel and Cité Universities

With recent news that scientists Klaus Stadlmann and Markus Hatzenbichler at the Vienna University of Technology (pictured below) have produced a small, lighweight and (relatively) cheap 3D printer, the prospect of accessible desktop printing is moving closer.  Last month several UK designers, including Kinneir Dufort’s Travis Baldwin, were invited as moderators for a multidisciplinary design workshop in Saint-Étienne with the participation of 40 diverse students from several international universities.  The goal was familiarize students with innovation techniques and work with multi-disciplinary, multi-national teams...skills often found in today’s product development and strategy projects.  The focus of the workshop was a posed, open-ended question:  How will personal fabrication technology be used in the future?

This was the third workshop produced by the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines of St Etienne, begun in 2009 by David Delafosse and Jenny Faucheu (ENSMSE) and a partnership with Ray Holland and John Boult (Brunel). The original goal was to expose engineering students to new design techniques, but has since evolved into a way to explore new innovation techniques and interesting future challenges. This year’s attendees included strategy students from Brunel, design students from St Etienne school of arts and design (ESADSE – Fr), and Ecole des Mines de Saint Etienne engineering students. Past years included design students from the Milan Politecnico.

The techniques explored this year were a combination of Synetics innovation methods combined with visual brainstorming and design strategy / service design tools.  The week went well, moving from initial briefings into the creation of ‘springboard’ phrases, then on to their initial visual sketch embodiment. During the course of the week, these were refined by looking at the target markets, business cases for the designs, technical feasibility, and of course the design of the product touchpoints.  This culminated into a final presentation at the end of the week, where the students clearly introduced, explained, and visualized the outcome of their work.

The future challenge was to consider how life could change if their existed a device that could create any object you wanted, whenever you wanted. What would it make? Where would you get the patterns – who would design them? How would it fit into your household or life? What would happen to the objects when you were finished with them? Would the changes to lifestyles be far reaching or modest? How would companies make profits and what happens with their brands? All these questions and more inspired the students to look at what could (and will) be possible within the next decade.

Several standout ideas came out of the workshop, particularly those around novel uses for the fabricators based on global megatrends such as the exploding elderly population. One especially intriguing idea thought to use the fabricators as a learning game, where teaching objects came into and out of existence. Others explored entertainment, medicine, and travel.  All in all, the workshop was a great success and the experience surpassed the previous year’s methods and results.  A big thanks goes to the 3 universities that made it all happen, the professors involved, and the fantastic students that came down for the week!

Travis Baldwin is Serior Designer with Kinnier Dufort