You could put one finger on a 3D mouse, stick another finger down your throat and blast a pile of 3D geometry onto any screen of any time-saving product development program with ease.
However, it’s still just a pile, perhaps a well thought out pile, but still, a pile… on a screen. It’s a conversation waiting for a reply four days later via email. It happens, but you’re starting to lose a few pounds from design-induced bulimia and a frustration about lengthy design efforts. It’s time we had a look at the future.
The Era of the ‘Real-Time Web’
There’s a lot of talk about the ‘Real-Time Web’ – conversations and information appearing online as they are created. Read-Write-Web is having their first Real-Time Web summit where companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo, who are already involved in various stages of bringing information to you in real-time, are gathering with others to discuss the impact it will have and the standard that need to be considered.
Even before this happens, you can see the real-time flow of information in Twitter search, the FriendFeed web interface, and Facebook search, which by the way, happens to be open source. And that’s not even the top 50 of companies pursuing real-time technology in the realm of Social Web Applications.
Real-time isn’t new. We all have a sense that Instant Messaging (IM) happens in real-time. And, it does, to an extent. It’s partly why we use it everyday. It’s immediate accessibility. However, it a linear flow, removed from the context of few, if any, relation.
Now, here’s where we turn the whole concept of anything approaching real-time, inside out. Apply the idea of ‘instant’ and ‘real’ to product, to retail environments, to engineering, to manufacturing. Not the conversation about them, but the experience of them happening every day, in real-time, around you.
That is more than real-time, that is real.
The Problem of More
You can imagine being inundated with that special experience happening around you, the like you’ve never seen before with real-time information. Cognitive overload. We all tend to think in terms of finding information. Sifting. Searching. Search is going to be a big part of creating a more streamline, conscience experience, but where search fails from textual results to geometry recognition to production environment, is in the filtering of data. Anyone that is online for a few minutes can realize the value in a system that provides relevant results.
Semantic filtering is happening in the MCAD/PLM world to an extent. 3DPartBrowser is building in shap recognition. Vuuch is building options into their web app which allow parts to be distinguished in different ways. Any app you currently use, whether web-based or otherwise, is a manual configuration of criteria, for the time being. But, building applications that learn behavioral response based on environment of fit, function, system or potential, is feasibly a production milestone away from the future of any web app.
I write all this to say, that in the design world, I’ve been looking for a product development company that gets it; ‘gets’ that innovation is not doing what’s currently being done, but creating what will be done next. I’m still looking at what each company is realizing through software development. Here’s what is odd. How Dassault talks about it is different from how other companies talk about it. I can’t exactly pinpoint it, but from a surface-level view, Dassault seems to get it. Partly due to the fact that the guy in charge, Bernard Charlès, happens to be the right person in the right position to help others get it. Not to say the other MCAD/PLM companies don’t get it. There are plenty of people in those companies that know what is happening out there, people that know the direction technology is trending who push development and management daily toward new ways of thinking about design, engineering, manufacturing and planning products in a adaptive environment. Whoever they are, whether CEO or summer intern, they’re helping bring on a new era of product design. Something that is more than real-time, something that is real.
Image: Bistrosavage
Disclosure: Oooo, Vuuch has an advertisement on this site. Josh also consults with them on the crazineess of product development. Dassault Systèmes actually saw it in their hearts to put up the flight and hotel for Josh to attend the Dassault Customer Conference. He also received some pens.
Loading ...
SolidSmack is a very small behemoth of an online community about 3D CAD, technology, design, robots, and ninjas… Ok, maybe not ninjas so much, but those guys are COOL so there just might be something about some dang ninjas.
{ 11 comments }
This and much more is an eventuality, the real question will be how much will it change the way products are developed in the future and filtering technologies. For instance, realtime twitter is rather useless beyond keeping track of a few dozen friends and facebook isn't much better in my opinion.
Jon @ WoodMarvels.com
ps: You got some free pens! No way!!! You're sure taking the FCC rules at heart!
Real time web isn't working for power users, becaus as a power user you want to be in controle and your not in controle of the webserver that runs your application. Running your own webserver would be the way to go.
Josh, you almost lost me with the first paragraph, but the rest was pretty good
I'm surprised you didn't throw in some reference to Google Wave but you are probably still waiting for an invite.
The question for me is if designers and engineers are really wanting this.Sure, you, me and your progressive blog readers might but what about the other 90% of designers and engineers sitting in their cube cranking out the products? If the value can be proven, they may be forced to do it (like PDM) but how long will that take?
how about just thinking a product into a CAD-CAM environment.
“Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/brain...
“Now, here’s where we turn the whole concept of anything approaching real-time, inside out. Apply the idea of ‘instant’ and ‘real’ to product, to retail environments, to engineering, to manufacturing. Not the conversation about them, but the experience of them happening every day, in real-time, around you. That is more than real-time, that is real.”
I love this section. It is hard for people in the traditional software or manufacturing worlds to see, but there is great potential for fusion of the two worlds. I think the Spore Creature Creator that ZCorp offers and companies like FigurePrints that turn WarCraft characters into statues are on the cutting edge of this world. Currently, their products are expensive, and slightly lower quality than mass manufactured objects, but for how long?
10 Years ago if you had photos printed you would stick them in an album. Now there is a Multi-billion dollar “Photobook” market of pre-printed professionally bound books. Advances in variable data printing made this possible. When you look at what 3D printer companies like Objet are doing you wonder if the next generation of kids will get Star Wars toys custom printed, rather than bought at Walmart. Exciting times!
“isn't working” yes, today there are limitations. But 2010, or 2010 +5 could be way different.
yep, still haven't gotten an invite, but the more I hear about it, the less I'm impressed, but yeah, even more curious to see it. I guess I'm thinking further along in the future. as you know, a lot of the focus on the web right now is real-time information. What I'm getting it is, forget the information, it's there in the environment, not on the screen. It'll be the shopping cart of product development. (nobody had to prove the value of a shopping cart, and even if you bring your own bag, you know you always leave it in the car… you know.)
That's it. I'm changing my job title to futurist and confining myself to a cabin filled with foam, binoculars and floor to ceiling monitors. anyone hiring?
I don't mind the thought of that, but it's going to be more simple than that. think adaptive environments. Oooo.
really exciting. exciting time to be in this industry. exciting time to have kids too. Seeing how they experience different ways of interacting and using technology from the ways we did, opens up the view to a vast amount of possibilities.
Yes, we definitely need a better shopping cart. I feel like we are the store and they have run out o bags!
Yes, we definitely need a better shopping cart. I feel like we are the store and they have run out o bags!
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 3 trackbacks }