Applying product language as a user interface and technology in new product design

(Case Study: Home 3D Printer)

(Authors: Kiarash Rahayi, Nasrin Moghaddam Ph.D)

Abstract

New technologies for whatever purpose have emerged will someday become public. These changes in life always require a long time to create a context. The design of 3D printers will also be included. Since the 1980s, there have been many ways to print 3D artifacts. These were all designed to meet the needs of industries and research, but manufacturers were not oblivious to home users. In this study, we tried to make the 3D printer with the technology available to persuade the home user and the user to experience pleasant exposure with the least complexity in interacting with the printer. Therefore, the product language as one of the semantic theories in the product was selected as the theoretical part of the studies and after extracting the 3D printer features from the perspective of the product language, these features were applied in meticulous design. These features, which include aesthetic, semiotics, and symbolic functions, along with essential semantic features such as affections and perceptual functions, helped the designer to design a product's communicative language, both in appearance and in usage and interactions, with enough communicative features to attract and appeal the user. With sufficient communication features to attract, encourage and use the user, although far from a new approach to 3D printing that exclusively meets the needs of the home user, this type of design can be expected to benefit from the design achievements of exclusively home-based printers in a team of experts.