Advanced Prototyping

What will you learn?

In Q1 two courses Prototyping with/for Digital Fabrication (PDF), and Prototyping with/for Extended Reality (PER, new course, pending approval) run in parallel. These emphasise the role of these digital technologies in prototyping advanced responsive, adaptive and/or ultra-personalised prototypes (i.e., prototyping with), and the role of prototyping for showing the potential of these visualization and fabrication technologies (i.e., prototyping for).

In PDF course, you will be exposed to theories, methods, and techniques on digitalisation, design automation, and digital fabrication. Learning activities will include lectures and workshops on 3D scanning, 3D modelling and parametric design tools (using Rhino Grasshopper), generative design (e.g. topology optimization), and digital fabrication technologies like 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC milling. You will apply the knowledge and skills obtained on these topics in an individual prototyping assignment, related to developing a ‘personalized fit’ product.

The PER course is a new course, and currently under development, and pending approval. Focus will lie on the application of virtual and augmented reality technologies in design processes (e.g. sketching in VR, user studies using VR), and for creating digital and hybrid experiences, of (complex) products/systems (e.g. to create to create digital twins of humans and products). Envisioned application areas are for instance cultural heritage, mobility, (design) education, and medical contexts. 

In Q2, the obtained knowledge and skills of PDF and PER are synthesised in the Advanced Prototyping Project (APP). In this group project, you will build (multiple) prototype(s), though an iterative design approach. You will test and evaluate your prototypes, and eventually exhibit both results from your prototyping process and final prototype(s) at a public venue (e.g. central hall of IDE faculty). The course offers the opportunity to select a project from a broad range of real-world cases (with a real client), related to digital fabrication and/or emerging materials. In the APP course you will also gain experience, through hand-on workshops, with various relevant design methods and transferable skills, such as ‘user observation’, ‘interview techniques’, ‘material testing’, ‘product photography’, ‘video making’, and ‘pitching’.
 

Note that these courses are an integral part of the minor, and cannot be followed as separate courses, due to the limited capacity.