Digital Tools, Distributed Making and Design

Abstract

Given the current social and business trends with digital fabrication and communication technologies, change in the manner and means of physical object production is clearly on the horizon. Recent peripheral projects show how access to digital fabrication and communication tools pull information for making toward the user, and enable the distribution of information and product outward. They also demonstrate vibrant user innovation in smaller scale projects for both personal and commercial applications. These current trends and peripheral projects are used to help locate where design and designers may find areas of growth in a potentially less-centralized, and more varied landscape of product development and production in the future.