Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
One future source of ready-designs for printing may be downloadable fabri-
cation applications, or FabApps for short (a term coined by my former students
Daniel Cohen and Jeff Lipton). A FabApp, like an iPhone App, would cover a
narrow range of applications, yet would offer its buyer just the right balance
of customization and ease of use.
A FabApp would cost 99 cents. You would buy a FabApp for a particular
need, for example, to create a set of custom grips for your bicycle handles.
After you purchased a FabApp online, it would guide you through the
design process. You would upload a photo of your hand and a quick optical
scan of your existing bicycle handles (to ensure the perfect it). The last
step: choose a color and material, click “print” and in a few minutes you
would become the proud owner of a brand new set of perfect-it custom
handlebar grips.
FabApps will offer expert designers of the future a new business model
for integrating their design expertise into a growing economy of distributed
manufacturing. Like iPhone apps, FabApps will generate a new economy. Small
custom printing apps will ind their niche in narrow yet complex markets that
are too small to attract the attention of big manufacturing companies, yet large
enough to offer opportunity to small businesses and individuals.
Continuous customization and product variety
Why do some technologies shake up our world while others quietly join us
without affecting our daily lives very much? Bursts of innovation happen when
an emerging technology removes a once prohibitive barrier of cost, distance, or
time. 3D printing shrinks two prohibitive costs to zero: the cost of customiza-
tion and the cost of complicated shapes.
Since customization is costly, product variety is costly. Companies can't
afford to offer their customers all the variety their customer would like.
Figuring out what sort of product variations customers prefer is a costly and
error-prone process.
