BY TIAN ZIXU
When I manufactured my graduate design,I bought a little CNC which cost about 400 dollars,and with it, I carved every piece of wood, plastic and metal at home. It took me about only one month to learn the software and how to control the CNC. If we combine with 3-d printer and even neno technology with the control skills are simplified and equipments are small and cheap enough for every family, the technology of making things might be popularized which means a real thing like a chair or a hamburger can be built by everyone and sent by e-mail. If you can download or build a 3d-model of chair by yourself and make it and home easily, why you drive to a shop to by a real one.
Left is present system,the red means designer’s idea, blue means what marketer likes and green means what customer need; purple means designer got an idea, marketer like it and produce it out but customers don’t buy it because they don’t like it; those products is called unmarketable product, I mark it as failed, its the night mare of producer and a waste of resource; yellow part means designer have an idea and costumers like it, but for some reason producer doesn’t like it or doesn’t think the costumer may like it, so the producer refuse to produce it, so we called the yellow part a pity and only the white part is perfect.
Now we look at future, costumer doesn’t need to by a real product, they just need to buy a project online and “print” them out at home-the user is the producer.
Now, for example, marketer want to produce 1000 pieces of product and ask designer to design them, red part means designers create 100 ideas and only the purple and white part (about 30)are adapted by producer and put into mass production, and each idea will produce about 33 pieces, as a result 30 out of 100 ideas created by designers can be make out, and 70 percent of the ideas don’t even have a chance to be realized, and some of them might be very good ideas. in the future, the designer only need to post their idea like a picture or a 3d-model with corresponding manufacture procedure on internet. the costumer can view them when searching online, choose what they like, purchase and download it and then they can make it by themselves. so, almost all the 100 ideas created by designers have an opportunity to be realized, so designers will have more freedom. For the costumers, nowadays, they have only 30 choices which is adapted by the marketer, but in the future, they will have all more choices which is created by designers.
In the future the marketer will still play the role of mid-agency between designer and costumer, they will offer the platform for designers and regulate the market, make everything in rule. Now, we can see, in the 30 ideas that marketer adapted from designers, some of them success, some of them failed, and the purple part is really a big waste and also a big risk for marketers, especially in the period of mass production, because once they decide to produce something, they will produce thousands pieces. But the relationship between demand and supply keeps changing every minute, very often when a product is made out, the producer finds that the demand has already gone. that is a big problem, because the purchase happens after the manufacture. While in the future, the users buy an idea and produce by themselves, the purchase happens before the manufacture, which means the purple part can be eliminated and the marketer will take much less risk.
Besides, since the costumer is exactly the producer, the yellow part can be eliminated too. Other thing like the transportation expenses will drop down. and if you get tired of one product, you can melt it and use as raw material again. the space in real world is very limited but unlimited in virtual space. all together, it makes this future system more competitive and it will take place of this present system as main stream, but as I said, more competitive doesn’t means better. Try to think a junior download a 3d-model and build a gun at home alone.
Design Denizens 