From our CEO Cristiano Sacchi: New Year, Same Wish

We asked Cristiano Sacchi, our co founder and CEO, to share some thoughts for the end of the year. Cristiano loves to look ahead and decided to write about a wish he has had for many many years...

"Another year has gone by and for the design community it was a very interesting one indeed. The fast spreading of desktop 3D printing alone makes 2012 a year to remember.

As we look forward to an even more interesting 2013 I have my usual, still unfulfilled, wish for the software development wizards out there: Will we finally see a good initial stage design concept tool? As a matter of fact, the back of any envelope, or a napkin, still beats any software for very early stage concept design. Can we finally do better than pen and paper to help creativity at every stage?

Over the years we have seen great progress in the conceptual design software space. Products like bonzai3d, Moment of Inspiration (MoI), and SketchUp offer good early stage creativity tools to industrial designers, architects and engineers, but they have not replaced the napkin yet.

The ultimate early-stage design tool would be something that you grab for an impromptu brainstorming session instead of pen and paper when pen and paper is readily available on your desk. If such a tool were available, the benefits would be incredible: the resulting draft model could be used downstream to create many things, such as accurate designs and 3D printouts. Early analysis tools (like like rendering and stress) and remote communication would also be very easy (e.g., you could Skype in a colleague from a remote location to have a quick opinion). And that would be just the start.

I have had this same wish for the past quarter of a century and one thing that gives me hope is that tablet computers have now gone mainstream. Will this new device finally inspire somebody to find a way to replace pen and paper for conceptual design? Maybe the lack of a proper device was the problem – as long as computers only sit on your desk and can only be operated with a keyboard and a mouse they might be intrinsically less appealing than pen and paper – and certainly you cannot bring them with you at breakfast or lunch when suddenly you start brainstorming about a new design idea. Will the tablet be the game changer?

So, will this be the year when I get my wish? Can I get my wish at all? Are napkins inherently better than today’s computers and software? What do you think?"

 

Comments

[Johnmuke]

Nice blog and great comment.

[Aurora Meneghello]

I love to see original sketches on paper by hand. It will be interesting to see how things change in the next 5 years.

[Lloyd]

I appreciate this very much. I do use paper and pencil for planning most but not all the time. I mostly do this when sitting down with clients. I make notes on paper for convenience - my pencil is always on. This naturally gravitates to little sketches and so on. I also will use hand drawings on sketch paper for some initial presentations of ideas when I suspect a client or an audience might find aesthetic pleasure in them - regardless of the accuracy of the sketches. At this stage of a project it is important to stir creative energy. At this time we are looking at ideas - good territory for both tablet and sketch pad. Later in a project, I've changed course mid stream often enough and done it all on the chip, so to speak. I can't say now how much it matters that I have many years of both kinds of experience - software and graphite. I am certain though that there is something feeding back from hand drawings about creative process which most people actually feel. Is that demographic dying out I wonder - maybe so.

With all this in mind, I have found that there is one tool that comes before paper and pencil or before tablet. It is the very same tool that when used for brainstorming will be invaluable for recognizing an entirely new paradigm, new relevance. For me this tool is as invaluable as an old-school desk lamp.

Ultra Geek Physicist David Bohm used this tool. He called the finished product of it 'coherence'. It is not ideas or imagination as they are a little flakey at times. They depend entirely on perception. Perception is known to be driven entirely by what we think can be done, not by an unlimited open mind. An open mind for me is like an open hand or the space in a cup. Plenty room for the unexpected, surprising, even the shocking yet fresh….an utterly reliable tool for this. No preconditioned ideas and concepts there to get in the way. Coherence best arises out of an empty hand. So I try to start there, to spend a little time there, because what follows is reliably better, more coherent, and, as the physicists like to say: "beautiful, elegant and harmonious." The implications are vast to be sure. Isn't that what we are going for in every New Year? What matter the media after that?

You ask: " Will the tablet be the game changer?" I wonder whether the tablet will make it easier to continue the game that already is, at the inception of ideas, and how creative is that game? The tablet has promise for sure and I'll probably be getting one soon but I do know that it alone will not answer my own quarter century question.

Very Best Wishes to all of you for a New Year