By ALICE RAWSTHORN
LONDON C — How do you design a toaster? By that, I don’t mean what skills and materials will be needed, but rather what the design process consists of. Would you be surprised if I suggested that it might begin with a manufacturer describing what type of toaster is required to a designer who envisages exactly what it will look like and how it will be made, then sends detailed specifications to a factory? Of course not. Countless products have been designed in that way since the Industrial Revolution.
Sunglasses made with various objects, giving each pair a unique look, by Cyrus Kabiru.
But a very different process was applied to the design of the toasters as well as of the vacuum cleaners, kettles, vases and toys that are to be exhibited at the first Istanbul Design Biennial, which opens on Oct. 13. All of those products were developed by the new genre of open-ended design processes, which deploy advanced production technologies, like 3-D printing, to enable the people who will use the finished objects to take critical design decisions about them.
More:In the Shifting World of Product Design, the User Now Has a Voice - NYTimes.com
