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

3D打印机或数控磨床等数字制造设备正变得越来越实惠，各种类型的技术爱好者越来越多地采用这种设备。制造独特的、高度个性化的实物制品对于广泛的最终用户来说是触手可及的：纺织品、家具、工具、艺术品或玩具可以根据独特的要求进行量身定做和制造。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。为了实现这种采用，有必要研究、开发和评估未来的设计工具，这些工具将使与制造设备的交互不仅更有用，而且本质上是可持续的，真正对普通民众有用。现状源于一系列问题：个人制造技术需要学习和使用努力，为最终用户提供的设计支持很少，功能几乎完全在异地(远离使用地点)，要求用户以数字和物理方式重复他们的设计，导致浪费精力和材料。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。我们专注于一组高度相关的使用环境和用例，其中个人制作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，其中个人制作可以增强表达和创造力；2)维修，其中个人制作可以支持设备的可持续使用；以及3)高度个性化的设计，其中个人制作可以允许任何用户满足对物理对象的任何要求。我们专注于通过上述用例的视角考虑的三个核心目标：1)开发现场交互，以使用户能够为制造实物进行设计；2)实现在制造之前对设计进行早期评估；以及3)开发关于交互设计和社会影响的新兴设计工具的指南。我们通过对用户需求的初步调查来实现这些目标，然后开发和评估专注于现场有形设计、现场参数设计和现场维修的设计工具。然后，我们将把这些工具的功能聚合到一个多用途的设计环境中，该环境服务于上述用例，并解决个人制造所面临的基本挑战。这些发展伴随着交互设计指南的发展，这些指导方针是为平易近人、可持续和民主化的个人设计而制定的。通过这项研究项目，我们将推进关于如何与个人制造设备互动和设计个人制造设备的最新水平，以使其可持续和有意义地民主化并嵌入日常生活。

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.