"emerging technology" entries
Designers are engineers
Dirk Knemeyer on the changing role of design in emerging technology.
The discipline of design is morphing. Designers’ roles and responsibilities are expanding at a tremendous pace. Jonathan Follett, editor of Designing for Emerging Technologies recently sat down with Dirk Knemeyer, founder of Involution Studios, who contributed to the book. Knemeyer discusses the changing role of design and designers in emerging technology.
Changing roles: Designers as engineers
Knemeyer explains the morphing role of designers as technologies advance and disciplines overlap. Designers are expected to have skills or working knowledge of topics well outside design, including programming and industrial design:
“We’re already seeing a convergence of engineering and design. We’ve been talking about it for a decade, that designers need to know how to code. Designers get it, and they’re out there and they’re learning to code. To remain relevant, to remain a meaningful part of the creationary process in these more complicated contexts, that’s only going to accelerate. Designers are going to need to see themselves as engineers, maybe as much, if not more, than as designers in order to be relevant in participating in the design and creation processes within the world of emerging technologies.”
Podcast: emerging technology and the coming disruption in design
Design's role in genomics and synthetic biology, robots taking our jobs, and scientists growing burgers in labs.
On a recent trip to our company offices in Cambridge, MA, I was fortunate enough to sit down with Jonathan Follett, a principal at Involution Studios and an O’Reilly author, and Mary Treseler, editorial strategist at O’Reilly. Follett currently is working with experts around the country to produce a book on designing for emerging technology. In this podcast, Follett, Treseler, and I discuss the magnitude of the coming disruption in the design space. Some tidbits covered in our discussion include:
- Design’s increasing role in genomics and synthetic biology. (For more on the genomic/synthetic biology space, here’s a recent Wired video interview with Craig Venter.)
- Robots taking our jobs, and what we humans will do for work.
- Embedded sensor networks and connected environments — soon, we’ll never get lost in a building again.
- Cross-pollination of industries to inform and evolve our emerging connected environments, such as the cross-disciplinary nature of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
- Approaching political policy as a design problem — politicians could benefit from design theory and rapid prototyping techniques found in design and manufacturing fields.
- Scientists growing burgers in labs.
And speaking of that lab burger, here’s Sergey Brin explaining why he bankrolled it:
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3D printing from your fingertips
The 3Doodler is tapping a new market: People who want a 3D printer but can't afford one.
The 3Doodler is a 3D printer, but it’s a pen. This takes 3D printing and turns it on its head.
In fact the 3Doodler rejects quite a lot of what most people would consider necessary for it to be called a 3D printer. There is no three-axis control. There is no software. You can’t download a design and print an object. It strips 3D printing back to basics.
What there is, what it allows you to do, is make things. This is the history of printing going in reverse. It’s as if Gutenberg’s press was invented first, and then somebody came along afterwards and invented the fountain pen. Read more…
Editorial Radar with Mike Loukides & Mike Hendrickson
Discussion on machine learning, 3D printing, devices and JavaScript
In this first episode of "Editorial Radar," O'Reilly editors Mike Loukides and Mike Hendrickson discuss the important technologies they're tracking.
Editorial Radar with Mike Loukides & Mike Hendrickson
Discussion on machine learning, 3D printing, devices and JavaScript
In this first episode of "Editorial Radar," O'Reilly editors Mike Loukides and Mike Hendrickson discuss the important technologies they're tracking.