Embodied design toolkits for consumers and creators

Abstract

Emerging technologies in digital fabrication are changing the role of designer and user. Now users can design their products with state-of-the-art design tools and manufacture them with low-cost fabrication tools. Several design interfaces have been proposed

however, most of them are still focused on creating 3D geometries easily without concerning the experiential aspect of the product. In this dissertation, I investigated design toolkits that could support people designing personal products based on their needs or uses. In the first phase, I understood how non-professionals select, design, and make products fit their needs through a long-term ethnographic study and a generative design study. The results showed that they went through an internal design process to convey personal preferences as well as constraints, and an external design process to apply expert knowledge or feedback, with active uses of their bodies. In the second phase, I propose the concept, embodied design toolkit, a system that lets people design-in-use by taking advantage of bodily interactions. Using a research-through-design method, I explored several design techniques for the embodied design toolkits through three prototypes: BodyMeter, Body2Desk, and SmartManikin. The iterative prototyping process associated with user evaluations revealed that “embodied interactions,” “perspectives” and “situated guidelines” let the designs evolve while compromising between personal requirements and external recommendations. The findings are integrated as a form of a design framework for future meta-designers. In the last phase, the proposed design framework was evaluated with expert designers in industry. I conclude my dissertation by arguing that the embodied design toolkits with egocentric bodily interactions associated with the exocentric representations of bodies could make the design process experiential and enhance the reflective journey of designing products fit personal uses. Interactive guidelines that are embodied and situated in the design context could also accentuate design iterations by acting as intelligent expert collaborators.