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REVISITING PROTOTYPING IN 2020: A SNAPSHOT OF PRACTICE IN UK DESIGN COMPANIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Mark Goudswaard ,
James Gopsill ,
Mike Harvey ,
Chris Snider ,
Andy Bell  and
Ben Hicks
Mark Goudswaard*
Affiliation:
Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab, University of Bristol;
James Gopsill
Affiliation:
Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab, University of Bristol; Centre for Modelling and Simulation (CFMS);
Mike Harvey
Affiliation:
Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab, University of Bristol;
Chris Snider
Affiliation:
Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab, University of Bristol;
Andy Bell
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC)
Ben Hicks
Affiliation:
Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab, University of Bristol;
*
Goudswaard, Mark, University of Bristol, Mechanical Engineering, United Kingdom, [email protected]

Abstract

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The importance of prototyping is unanimous with numerous studies into the media, types, roles and properties of prototypes. However, no recent papers have sought to examine and characterise industry practice and if and how this has changed since the early 2000s.

To address this, a snapshot of industrial prototyping practice with particular attention to the what, when, why, how, and by whom is reported. The study involved five small-medium sized design companies based in the South-West of the UK and validation of the findings by two independent practitioners.

The snapshot revealed that 3D printing and virtual prototyping tools have reached widespread adoption in SMEs,that their design processes are highly agile and iterative and are difficult to fit to any extant design process model.

Rather, the approaches appear to implicitly comprise of three levels of design convergence: macro, meso, and micro, which correspond to finer/more detailed changes.

The results also reveal the frequent transitions between digital and physical media and the need to manage these transitions to ensure the product representations in different media are appropriately up-to-date.

Keywords

Design practiceDesign processNew product development
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 1: ICED21 , August 2021 , pp. 2581 - 2590
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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