An exploratory study on the use of digital sculpting in conceptual product design

Abstract

ElsevierAlcaide Marzal, J.; Diego-Mas, JA.; Asensio Cuesta, S.; Piqueras Fiszman, B. (2013). An exploratory study on the use of digital sculpting in conceptual product design. Design Studies. 34(2):264-284. doi:10.1016/j.destud.2012.09.001. An Exploratory Study on the Use of Digital Sculpting in Conceptual Product Design AbstractThe product design process involves intensive manipulation of graphical data, from pencil sketches to CAD files. The use of graphic software is common among professionals in this field.Despite this, the conceptual design stage remains intensive in paper and pencil work, as CAD systems are still too rigid to allow a creative production of concepts. In this paper the use of digital sculpting software is proposed as a way of producing 3D sketches in the early stages of the process. An experiment is conducted to determine to which extent 3D sculpt sketches can be considered as a suitable tool for conceptual design. The results show a better performance of 2D drawings, but support the complementary use of digital sculpting.

A first sketch of Computer Aided Ideation : Exploring CAD tools as externalization media in design ideation

“…Verstijnen et al (1998), Do (2005) and Babapour 2015)to develop CAD tools that better support designers' ideation processes, using the knowledge gained from studying sketching. Researchers have argued that if CAD tools are to compete with sketching, they must be intuitive, allow ambiguous representations and e ortless exploration of ideas and be able to capture sudden thoughts and ideas (Alcaide-Marzal et al, 2013;Hacker et al, 2002;Pei et al, 2009;Séquin, 2004;Verstijnen et al, 1998). However, when exploring the use of available CAD tools, many studies have found that CAD tools have limited to no use in design ideation.…”

“…Early studies concluded that CAD tools of the time did not live up to the requirements of design ideation and were only useful for the later stages of the design process (Stappers and Hennessey, 1999;Verstijnen et al, 1998). Later studies have found that pen-and-paper sketching is better for generating solutions (Alcaide-Marzal et al, 2013;Stones and Cassidy, 2007), reinterpretation (Alcaide-Marzal et al, 2013;Stones and Cassidy, 2010) and conceiving the problem (Bilda and Demirkan, 2003). One of the major reasons CAD tools are deemed unsuited for ideation is that they are argued to not support ambiguous representations (van Dijk, 1995;Hennessey and Stappers, 1999;Verstijnen et al, 1998) and therefore cannot enable the conversation with the material that allows the designer to see new directions for her original thought (Charlesworth, d.…”

“…CAD tools for design ideation are commonly evaluated by comparing them to pen-and-paper sketches. A common method that yields an easily comparable result is to conduct a statistical analysis of the outcomes, such as number of sketches or reinterpretations (Alcaide-Marzal et al, 2013;Oh et al, 2005). Several studies also analyse the artefacts from the di erent media and use this as the point of comparison (Alcaide-Marzal et al, 2013;Knight et al, 2005;Won, 2001).…”

“…While there have been several studies exploring the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools for design ideation in the last two decades (e.g. Stappers and Hennessey (1999), Charlesworth (2007) and Alcaide-Marzal et al (2013)), many have found that the available CAD tools at the time did not support reflective conversation, serendipitous interpretation a and creativity, making them unsuited for design ideation. However, as the capabilities of CAD tools have increased since, the conclusions from studies undertaken with tools now considered obsolete might no longer be valid.…”

Roles of externalisation activities in the design process

“…For example, Séquin (2005) showed how digital media could allow designers to explore a wide range of design alternatives through computation and programming. In another study, a digital sculpting medium was found suitable for the ideation phase, due to its restricted precision, which enabled the designers to carry out activities similar to that of sketching in terms of the number of ideas and reinterpretations (Alcaide-Marzal, Diego-Más, Asensio-Cuesta et al, 2012). Digital modelling media -Computer-aided media differ in the particular approaches that they allow for working with digital models (e.g.…”