The joy of prototyping

April 11th, 2008

Human beings are tactile, visual creatures. Given the choice, we’d rather touch and hold physical objects to find out how they work than look at representations of them on a flat screen. Material objects give us information that’s hard to discern in two dimensions, such as scale and finish, or a sense of aesthetics and ergonomics. And in the world of product design a real, tangible manifestation of what’s on the drawing board can be an essential tool to convince the client that their product is developing in the way they want it to.

Working prototypes or models not only allow designers to test and refine their blueprints, but they can also wow and excite clients and consumers ahead of a final launch to market. To whet the appetite in just this way, Nissan Design Europe used UK company Ogle Models and Prototypes to create a Nissan Micra convertible car that would showcase its Colour & Concept designs to the International Motor Show 2007 in Frankfurt. Machine tooling was used to produce bumpers from a model board and prototype headlamps from solid acrylic, while grills were created using selective laser sintering (SLS), an ‘additive’ process of rapid prototyping that builds models from thin layers of powder. The result was the creation, in ten weeks, of a kind of composite car, half fully manufactured frame, half prototype re-trim.

Dyson designers and engineers also use SLS prototypes to assess the form of a final product. The DC24 vacuum cleaner, released this month [March], needed to be smaller than a full sized Dyson, but with the same capabilities. So designers used SLS models to make sure the scaling was right, parts fit together correctly and that the machine was durable.

Colour is another a powerful element in any design and adding colour to a prototype or model can make a huge difference to a client’s perception of how the final design is going to look. Clothing company Timberland uses 3D colour ‘printing’ as part of its rapid prototyping cycle to turn out ‘innumerable iterations and variations [so] the designers and marketing managers can really be sure the product is what Timberland is expecting,’ says Timberland CAD manager for footwear Toby Ringdahl. Reebok’s DMX Shear trainer was also developed using 3D colour printing, achieving a realistic prototype remarkably similar to the finished product.

More technical design and engineering challenges can also be overcome through prototype testing. In creating a first-to-market fully-enclosed ‘petal actuator’ aerosol for cosmetics brand Dove, Seymourpowell had to develop a single working piece which combined a soft-rubber moulding and more solid polypropylene plastic, while also ensuring the aerosol button was easy to use. From a user’s point of view, the resulting button is soft, tactile and sensory, with no visible split lines between the materials. ‘This needed a lot of difficult prototyping to get it to work,’ says Seymourpowell creative director Adrian Caroen.

Another way of exploring how products might look and function is through conceptual visualisation. Although perhaps not strictly prototyping, companies such as Intel and Nokia are using models, animations and CGI (computer-generated imagery) techniques to explore visions of futuristic products emerging from new technologies. Nokia’s ‘organic’ Morph concepts, for example, are visualisations stemming from the company’s ongoing research into nanotechnology. Intel meanwhile has worked with Ideo to explore how mobile technologies might influence and tap into changing lifestyles, presenting the ideas and mock-up products in a series of short videos.

The selection of projects here shows how prototyping is instrumental in exploring, testing and reviewing designers’ ideas. Whether aesthetic, mechanical or conceptual, prototypes are a vital aspect of product design and engineering processes and they demand a wide range of techniques. It’s not unlikely that designers will call on the traditional craftsmanship of skilled model makers one minute, while turning to embrace the dizzying prospects of rapid manufacturing the next.

This article was written for Design Week, 11 April 2008.

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