Episode Summary

Episode Summary

Episode Summary

Episode Summary

Episode Summary

Episode Summary

Episode Summary

This is the final article in a series of six looking at the future of experience design for emerging technologies. The first five Future of Design articles were: Emerging Technologies, Genomics and Synthetic Biology, Robotics, the IoT, and 3D Printing / Additive Fabrication.

Episode Summary

This is the fifth in a series of six articles looking at the future of experience design for emerging technologies — including the Internet of Things, robotics, genomics / synthetic biology, and 3D printing / additive fabrication. The first four Future of Design articles were: Emerging Technologies, Genomics and Synthetic Biology, Robotics and the IoT.

Additive fabrication—more popularly known as 3D printing—is a process of creating a three-dimensional object by printing one miniscule layer at a time, based on a computer model. This flexible technology can use a wide variety of substrates including plastic, metal, glass, and even biological material. Custom production using additive manufacturing techniques promises to disrupt many industries, from construction to food to medicine. Possibilities for this technology range from immediately practical applications such as printing new parts just-in-time to fix a broken appliance; to controversial, uncomfortable realities, including generating guns on demand; to hopeful and futuristic methods, perhaps the ability to create not just viable human tissue, but complete, working organs, which could be used in transplants or for the testing of new drugs and vaccines.