21st Century Prototyping: Improving product prototyping through the integration of physical and digital workflow

为了设计未来的产品，我们需要未来的原型工具。在超过300亿英镑的消费产品市场中，对非技术用户声音的需求等优先事项与先进产品和严格的时间/成本目标相竞争。这些压力在原型制作过程中表现得非常明显，在原型制作过程中，单个产品的模型通常有100个，而且不灵活、技术先进、资源密集。为了获得成功和发展，原型需要做得更多，更快，更便宜，具有更高的可访问性。这个项目旨在提高原型设计过程中的学习、可访问性和效率。它将探索将物理和数字原型无缝集成到单个工作流程中的可行性和价值。混合现实、触觉界面和手势控制等新兴技术彻底改变了我们与数字世界的互动方式。据预测，到2025年，这项技术将无处不在，在未来十年将具有颠覆性，并将推动我们在未来数字工作场所的工作和互动方式，工程是实现价值的前五大行业之一。在原型设计中，他们将打破物理和数字的鸿沟，创造无缝的体验，使每个领域的优势同时实现。这种新的物理-数字集成工作流程为工程师和用户带来了深刻的机会，支持技术活动并简化了沟通。在许多可能性中，用户可以实时创建和感受原型的数字变化，动态地将高级分析覆盖到物理模型上，并通过物理-数字，触觉，交互式原型支持早期决策。这些功能将允许每个原型进行更多的学习，扩大技术设计的可访问性，并简化原型制作过程。然而，我们还不知道这个令人兴奋的愿景是如何实现的，究竟有什么好处、价值或成本，实现的可行性，或者有效的工作流程方法。该项目将通过创建和研究几个演示平台来探索物理数字工作流程，这些平台将触觉、混合现实和手势控制技术结合并应用于目标原型场景中。在确定优先级和开发为集中的演示工具之前，我们将探索技术，以了解孤立的sprint中的能力，这些演示工具允许我们探索跨真实原型案例、跨活动、类型和涉众的集成工作流。演示将与最终用户、行业合作伙伴和公众一起评估和验证，以确定学习、速度、成本和使用特性。项目结果将包括集成原型的工作流程，包括价值、有效性、可行性和未来机会的知识。实现的“工具包”还将为工业合作伙伴和学术界提供范例，并在工程中有效地使用集成的物理-数字工作流程。所有软件和硬件都将通过Github和项目网页开源，让全球研究人员和公众创建自己的系统并在此基础上进行构建。未来的工作将根据工作结果扩展能力，导致下一代工程设计和原型工具。产品合作伙伴（汞合金、实现设计和Cubik）和AMRC将带来原型设计、工程师和最终用户的专业知识，并从开发的工作流程和技术中受益。原始设备制造商Ultraleap和Autodesk将带来沉浸式技术专业知识和尖端设计系统，并将从案例研究实施和研究以及未来的应用机会中受益。布里斯托尔数字期货研究所将促进20多家合作伙伴企业和公众之间的合作，提供支持他们解决全球问题的数字解决方案的产出。

To design the future of products we need the future of prototyping tools. Across the £30Bn+ consumer product markets, priorities such as demand for non-technical user voice vie against advanced products and tough time/cost targets. These pressures are acutely felt in the prototyping process, where models often number in the 100s for a single product, and are inflexible, technically advanced, and resource-intensive to create. To succeed and evolve prototyping needs to do more, quicker, cheaper, with higher accessibility.This project aims to enhance learning, accessibility, and efficiency during prototyping. It will explore feasibility and value of seamlessly integrating physical and digital prototyping into a single workflow.Recent and rapidly emerging technologies such as mixed reality, haptic interfaces, and gesture control have revolutionised the way we interact with the digital world. It's predicted that this tech will be ubiquitous by 2025, will be disruptive for the next decade, and will drive the way we work and interact across the future digital workplace, with engineering a top-5 sector to realise value. In prototyping, they will break down the physical-digital divide and create seamless experiences, where the strengths of each domain are realised simultaneously.This new physical-digital integrated workflow brings profound opportunities for both engineers and users, supporting technical activities and simplifying communication. Amongst many possibilities users may physically create and feel digital changes to prototypes in real-time, dynamically overlay advanced analyses onto physical models, and support early-stage decision-making with physical-digital, tactile, interactive prototypes. These capabilities will allow more learning per prototype, widen accessibility to technical design and streamline the prototyping process. However, we don't yet know how this exciting vision may be fulfilled, exactly what benefits, value or costs there may be, feasibility of implementation, or effective workflow approaches.The project will explore physical-digital workflow by creating and investigating several demonstrator platforms that combine and apply haptic, mixed reality, and gesture control technologies in targeted prototyping scenarios. Technologies will be explored to understand capability in isolated sprints, before prioritisation and development into focused demonstrator tools that allow us to explore integrated workflow across real prototyping cases, spanning activities, types, and stakeholders. Demonstrators will be evaluated and verified with end-users, industry partners, and the public to establish learning, speed, cost, and usage characteristics.Project outcomes will comprise workflows for integrated prototyping with knowledge of value, effectiveness, feasibility, and future opportunities. A 'toolkit' of implementations will also provide exemplars for industrial partners and academia and lead the effective use of integrated physical-digital workflow in engineering. All software and hardware will be open-sourced via Github and the project webpage, letting global researchers and the public create their own systems and build upon the work. Future work will extend capabilities in line with outcomes of the work, leading to the next generation of engineering design and prototyping tools.Industrial Partners The Product Partnership (Amalgam, Realise Design, and Cubik) and AMRC will bring prototyping, engineers, and end-user expertise and benefit from the workflows and technologies that are developed. OEMs Ultraleap and Autodesk will bring immersive technology expertise and access to cutting edge design systems, and will benefit from case study implementations and studies and future application opportunities. Bristol Digital Futures Institute will facilitate collaboration across 20+ partner businesses and the public, with outputs supporting their mission for digital solutions that tackle global problems.