PhD into Consumer Created Designs

“An investigation of the feasibility of product architectures to facilitate consumer-created designs in the consumer electronics industry, using rapid manufacturing technologies as an enabler”

URL = http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/cd/research/groups/dr/

PhD thesis by Matt Sinclair, Loughborough University, Design Practice Research Group

Interview

From the Ponoko blog:

What from this experience inspired you to undertake your PhD into consumer created designs?

"To be honest, that wasn’t the focus of the PhD when I started. It began with me looking at the way rapid manufacturing technologies would change the industrial design process, and I was thinking more along the lines of consumers working alongside designers, what’s usually called user-centred design. Again whilst I was at Nokia, I had run a project where we worked with professional sports people to design a range of products; we interviewed them at the beginning of the project, and then repeatedly asked them to review the designs and models and to give their feedback. But as my PhD research continued, I started to realise that the user-centred design process is still a process where the designer is in control, where the designer is the ‘expert’ and has the power to veto features or suggestions from the user. And it became clear that the reason for this is that the designer has access to the means of production, ie factories and machines, which the user does not. Rapid manufacturing changes that completely. When 3D printers are available to consumers, they will begin to design and make their own products whether professional designers like it or not." (http://blog.ponoko.com/2008/10/22/he-dont-do-retro-interview-with-matt-sinclair-pt1/)