Has the Development of Rapid Prototyping Influenced the Creative Processes in Product Design Education?

Volume 15 Issue 3 October - December 2018

Research Paper

Has the Development of Rapid Prototyping Influenced the Creative Processes in Product Design Education?

Tom Page*

Associate Professor, Department of Product Design, Nottingham Trent University, England.

Page, T. (2018). Has the Development of Rapid Prototyping Influenced the Creative Processes in Product Design Education? i-manager’s Journal of Educational Technology, 15(3), 40-51. https://doi.org/10.26634/jet.15.3.14699

Abstract

This paper examines the development of rapid prototyping and how it affects industrial design students. Using a combination of survey and interview sessions the researcher studied how the development of these technologies affected the creative processes that designers use to develop new products, and whether this has had a positive or negative effect. The results show that the reduction in cost, increase in speed, and increase in dimensional accuracy has influenced many students to look to rapid prototyping/additive manufacturing to produce prototypes, despite production costs still being relatively high. This has led to designers prioritising certain areas of the design process over others, yet to what extent and to what consequences remains to be seen.