La Ferrari dello studente

Maranello, 19th July 2011. Studenti della Seoul Hongik University vincono il Ferrari World Design Contest, concorso di idee che ha visto 50 prestigiose scuole di Design di tutto il mondo prendersi carico del compito di immaginare e proporre le auto del Cavallino del futuro. La scuola coreana ha vinto la competizione davanti a IED Torino e Royal College of Arts di Londra

3D scanner characterisation for Open Design

The 3D laser scanning technology has been reached by more and more users in the last years, thanks to a new market of low cost devices, more affordable for simple, non-professional use. The educational use is one of such environments, and its didactics purposes gives the opportunity to test new technology from a variety of different point of views. 3D laser scanning, for example, is very promising in environments like Design university education, where the control of the shape of an object is one of the topics discussed in courses, and one of the main focuses of the product design profession. This paper describes the use of this technology in students and research lab, and its metrological characterization, especially on the relationship between performances and object optical characteristics (like gloss and color), object position and ambient lighting. It is to keep in mind that, in a student lab, geometry reverse acquisition is one of the activities done to understand products layout: the knowledge of influences of surrounding and material characteristics on scanner performances is a key factor to improve the performance when low cost scanner are involved. The characterization performed gave the opportunity to students to test how such devices work, the output reliability, which are the inherent issues and what kind of strategies should be introduced to enhance the scanning quality, indeed one of the main problems of these low cost devices

DESIGN BY COMPONENTS - CASA JASMINA EXHIBITION

Fabrizio Valpreda is teaching in Politecnico di Torino and he’s been a friend & supporter to Casa Jasmina since day one. With the help of Arianna Rattazzi and of Fablab Torino maker and TooWheels creator Fabrizio Alessio, he asked the 2017-18 Design by Components Course (50+ students) to imagine and design projects able to meet Casa Jasmina’s inhabitants. We are working together with them to bring some of these ideas to life

Grüt: A Gardening Sensor Kit for Children

Food waste is one of the main problems in our society. This is mainly caused by people's behaviors and attitudes, which influence the whole food chain, from production to final consumption. In fact, food is generally perceived as a commodity by adults, who transmit this behavior to children, who in turn do not develop any consciousness about food's source. One way to reduce the problem seems to be by changing consumers' attitudes, which develop during the early years of childhood. Research has shown that after attending school garden classes, children's food-related behavior changes. Growing crops is not always easy-it can't be done in the domestic space, and this lead to a loss of the long term positive effects. This paper presents a project that tries to teach children how to grow their own food indoors and outdoors, mixing real and virtual reality, connecting something natural like a plant to the Internet of Things (or IOT, a network of physical objects virtually connected to each other and to the web). The use of sensors related to an app makes this process more fun and useful for educational purposes. The aim of the project is to change children's attitude towards food, increasing their knowledge about production and consumption, in order to reduce waste on a long term basis. The research has been developed in collaboration with Cisco NL and MediaLAB Amsterdam. The user testing has been executed with Dutch children in Amsterdam

Education & Practice in Open Design. Improving the Learning Experience Through Knowledge Connections

Learning complex disciplines traditionally requires the adoption of equally articulated methods and strategies. Design does not escape this principle, on the contrary it enhances some of its peculiar characteristics: very different skills, often not aligned development and application times, tools complexity, declare an environment where methods and practice had always defined a non-linear educational scenario (Cennamo et al., 2011). The paper discusses the matter while bringing a case study specifically defined with the purpose to test a new educational scenario where a student is put into conditions to experiment the entire Design process by himself, being connected with different competences inside a complex multidisciplinary environment, in order to develop a physical Design solution for a user with disabilities

Beyond Participatory Design for Service Robotics

The spread of technologies as Cloud and Distributed Computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning techniques comes with highly disruptive innovation potential and consequent design imperatives. High connectivity of devices and machines is shaping not only sensing and monitoring capabilities, but also describing ever more ubiquitous and diffuse computing capabilities, affecting decision-making with a wide range of assisting tools and methods. With the scaling potential of moving beyond its contemporary application such as industrial facilities monitoring, precision farming and agriculture, healthcare and risk management scenarios, RaaS is bound to involve an increasingly fluid and diverse range of users, shaping new socio-technical systems where practices, habits and relationships will evolve in respect to its adoption. On these premises, applied research at Polytechnic Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics in Turin, Italy, focuses on the development of a service robotics platform able to operate on the local scale and capable of adapting to evolving scenarios

Open Source e produzione locale. Nuovi paradigmi di sviluppo multidisciplinare - Open Source and local production. New paradigms in multidisciplinary development

La produzione industriale tradizionale si basa su un sistema lineare che poco si presta a soddisfare le istanze dell’innovazione a cui assistiamo da qualche decennio. Nuovi paradigmi emergono tuttavia da ambiti inaspettati, di cui l’Open Source Design è un esempio: le regole sulla proprietà intellettuale evolvono, così offrendo la possibilità di generare nuove connessioni tra competenze attraverso la libera trasmissione delle informazioni. A ciò si aggiunge la possibilità di produrre localmente con tecnologie di fabbricazione digitale, dando luce ad innovativi nodi di produzione di manufatti. Risulta quindi strategico il valore della formazione di designer in grado di gestire tali processi, per connettere con flessibilità discipline diverse in reti ad alta resilienza progettuale e produttiva. Traditional industrial production is based on a linear system that does not lend itself to satisfying the demands of innovation we have been witnessing for a few decades. However, new paradigms emerge from unexpected areas, within which Open Source Design is an example: the rules on intellectual property evolve, thus offering the possibility of generating new connections between skills through the free transmission of information. Moreover, there is the possibility to produce locally with digital manufacturing technologies, giving light to innovative production nodes of artefacts. The value of training designers capable of managing these processes is therefore strategic, to flexibly connect different disciplines in networks with high Design and production resilience

Re-futuring: Conscientização e processo de design na era hiper-tecnológica

The complex relationship between man and technology is the starting point of an interesting design process, aiming to highlight the lack of awareness in most of the behavioral choices of man. Man is distinguished by its nature of finding short-term solutions, with the almost complete inability to prefigure long-term effects resulting from his unconscious decisions. Technology, on the other hand, is developing fast, becoming day by day more potentially uncontrollable. Specific attention is given to the innovations that can cause unpredicted impacts on human life: knowing history by its sociological implications allows us to recognize some recursive patterns that can then be transformed into opportunities. The goal is not an attempt to predict future trends in technological innovation but to find the right formulas in order to raise the level of responsibility in individuals’ behavior. In this paper the role of the designer is analyzed within the technology of 3D printing, enhancing its potential ability of changing both technological and human environments. A first answer to the problems triggered by 3D printing can be found, for example, in the positive phenomena that are activated within collaborating groups by sharing space and knowledge, in communities with a bottom-up approach, where the designer is actively involved.Keywords: human factors, ethics, awareness, 3D printing, rapid manufacturing, behaviors, transdisciplinarity, re-thinking, re-making, metadesign.A complexa relação entre o homem e a tecnologia é o ponto de partida de um processo de design interessante, com o objetivo de destacar a falta de consciência na maioria das escolhas de comportamento do homem. O homem se distingue por sua natureza de encontrar soluções em curto prazo, com a impossibilidade quase total de prefigurar efeitos em longo prazo resultantes de suas decisões inconscientes. A tecnologia, por outro lado, se desenvolve rapidamente, tornando-se a cada dia mais incontrolável. Atenção especial é dada às inovações que podem causar impactos imprevisíveis sobre a vida humana: conhecer a história por suas implicações sociológicas nos permite reconhecer alguns padrões recursivos que podem ser transformados em oportunidades. O objetivo não é uma tentativa de prever tendências futuras em inovação tecnológica, mas de encontrar as fórmulas certas, a fim de elevar o nível de responsabilidade no comportamento dos indivíduos. Neste trabalho, o papel do designer é analisado no âmbito da tecnologia de impressão 3D, aumentando a sua capacidade potencial de mudar os ambientes tecnológico e humano. A primeira resposta aos problemas desencadeados por impressão 3D pode ser encontrada, por exemplo, nos fenômenos positivos que são ativados dentro de grupos que colaboram através da partilha de espaço e do conhecimento, em comunidades com uma abordagem bottom-up, onde o designer está ativamente envolvido.Palavras-chave: fatores humanos, ética, consciência, impressão 3D, produção rápida, comportamentos, a transdisciplinaridade, repensar, retomada, metadesign