Democratic and Sustainable Personal Design and Fabrication through In-situ Co-Design and Previsualization

像3D打印机或CNC铣床这样的数字制造设备正变得越来越便宜，并且越来越多地被各种技术爱好者所采用。制造独特的、高度个性化的物理文物是广泛的最终用户可以达到的：纺织品、家具、工具、艺术品或玩具可以根据独特的要求进行定制和制造。虽然制造能力正在稳步提高，但在使制造手段真正接近并被各种最终用户使用方面还需要取得更多进展。为了实现这一目标，有必要研究、开发和评估未来的设计工具，这将使与制造设备的交互不仅更加可用，而且具有内在的可持续性，并且对一般人群真正有用。现状是基于一系列问题：个人制造技术需要学习和使用的努力，为最终用户提供很少的设计支持，功能几乎完全不在原位（远离使用位置），并且要求用户以数字和物理方式迭代他们的设计，导致浪费了精力和材料。通过这个研究项目，我们的目标是提供解决这些固有问题的新方法。我们专注于一系列高度相关的使用环境和用例，其中个人制造的广泛采用必然会产生有意义和积极的影响：1)业余爱好者和艺术活动，个人制造可以增强表达和创造力；2)修理，个人制造可以支持设备的可持续使用；3)高度个性化的设计，个人制造可以允许任何用户满足对物理对象的任何要求。通过上述用例，我们将重点放在3个核心目标上：1)开发现场交互，使用户能够为物理工件的制造进行设计；2)在制造之前对设计进行早期评估；3)针对交互设计和社会影响，为新兴设计工具制定指导方针。我们通过对用户需求的初步调查来实现这些目标，随后开发和评估设计工具，重点是现场有形设计、现场参数设计和现场修复。然后，我们将这些工具的功能聚合到一个多用途设计环境中，该环境服务于上述用例，并解决个人制造面临的基本挑战。这些发展伴随着交互设计指导方针的发展，以实现平易近人、可持续发展和民主化的个人制造。通过这个研究项目，我们将推进我们如何与个人制造设备互动和设计的艺术状态，使其民主化，并将其可持续地、有意义地嵌入日常生活中。

Digital fabrication devices like 3D printers or CNC mills are becoming increasingly affordable and are seeing growing adoption across various types of technology enthusiasts. Manufacturing unique, highly personalized physical artifacts is within reach for a wide range of end-users: textiles, furniture, tools, art pieces, or toys can be tailored to fit unique requirements and fabricated. While the manufacturing capabilities are steadily improving, more progress is required in making the means for fabrication genuinely approachable and used by a variety of end-users. To achieve this adoption, it is necessary to research, develop, and evaluate the design tools of the future, which will make the interaction with fabrication devices not only more usable, but also inherently sustainable and genuinely useful for the general population. The status quo is grounded in a set of issues: personal fabrication technology demands learning and usage effort, offers little design support to end users, functions almost exclusively ex-situ (away from the location of use), and demands that users iterate their designs digitally and physically, leading to wasted effort and material. With this research project, we aim to contribute novel approaches that address these inherent issues. We focus on a set of highly relevant usage contexts and use cases where the widespread adoption of personal fabrication is bound to have a meaningful and positive impact: 1) hobbyist and artistic activities, where personal fabrication can augment expression and creativity, 2) repairs, where personal fabrication can support sustainable use of devices, and 3) highly individual design, where personal fabrication can allow any user to fulfill any requirement for a physical object. We focus on 3 core objectives that we consider through the lens of the aforementioned use cases: 1) the development of in-situ interactions to enable users to design for the fabrication of physical artifacts, 2) enabling early evaluation of designs prior to fabrication, and 3) the development of guidelines for emerging design tools, with respect to both interaction design and societal impact. We approach these objectives through an initial investigation of user requirements, followed by developing and evaluating design tools focused on in-situ tangible design, in-situ parametric design, and in-situ repairs. We will then aggregate the functionalities of the tools into a multipurpose design environment that serves the aforementioned use cases and address the fundamental challenges faced by personal fabrication. These developments are accompanied by the development of interaction design guidelines for approachable, sustainable, and democratized personal fabrication. With this research project, we will advance the state of the art regarding how we interact with and design for personal fabrication devices to democratize and embed them sustainably and meaningfully in everyday life.