---
title: Digital Prototyping For Design
page_type: course
track: Instrumentation
course_type: Workshop
feature_img: /assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-2/digital_prototyping_for_design.jpg
img_caption: MDEF Design Interventions (Josefina Nano), Barcelona
faculty:
    - santiago-fuentemilla
    - oscar-gonzalez
    - josep-marti
    - petra-garajova
    - adai-surinach
ects: 12
---

{{ insert_banner() }}

## Syllabus

Advanced manufacturing, rapid prototyping and new design methodologies are not only changing how we work, live and play but reshaping the processes and interactions in the cities and sociecities. The introduction of those processes into the design and industry fields are changing the paradigm on how we conceive the actual society and its production methods. This new mediation between the old knowledge and new techniques is making the process as important as the end work, all becoming a whole.

During this 2 term course (2&3), students learn how to envision, prototype and document their projects and ideas through many hours of hands-on experience with digital fabrication tools, taking a variety of code formats and turning them into physical objects. The program provides advanced digital fabrication instruction for students through an unique, hands-on curriculum and access to technological tools and resources.

**Keywords: Digital Fabrication, Rapid Prototyping, Micro-Challenges**

### Learning Objectives

**The goal of DIGITAL PROTOTYPING FOR DESIGN** is to combine the concepts and practices of digital fabrication & prototyping electronices with the objectives of the MDEF course in a meaningful way to develop student research projects.

A core aim is to empower students:

- To unfold the foundation behind nowadays Big Tech (systems thinking, architectures, politics, IP models, programmed obsolescence).
- To explore emergent (research and industry) and alternative (deprecated tech, not massively adopted, vernacular, analog) technologies, both from a narrative, application, and implementation point of view.
- By providing tools and methods for the rapid prototyping of (technological) artifacts (embedding software and hardware working prototypes in the design process).
- To familiarize us with the Fab Lab / Maker / Hacker mindset, ecosystem, and resources (using digital fabrication, distributed design, open-source, shared processes, worldwide networks).
- To ensure we end up the program with a much more creative, critical, and personal approach towards technology.
- To promote a collaborative spirit inside and outside the program; you can't know everything about technology, but you can ask about anything (asking the right questions and creating partnerships).

![](/assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-2/digital_prototyping_for_design_1.jpg)


### Methodological Strategies

The program apply Fab Academy mindset and set of skills, but applying new methodologies such as **"challenges"**, redistributing the impact of weekly hours and adding new assessment criteria.

The instructional design of the course has two fundamental assumptions, individual reflection tasks for each weekly topic, and monthly intensive maker-sprint in the form of **“micro-challenges”**. Students work in small groups to develop week-long projects applying knowledge and skills from the previous Fab Academy topics with concepts related to MDEF and their research projects, aimed to bridge the gap that has existed between these two courses and demonstrating the competencies acquired.

The challenges combine four weekly cycles into one intense project-based fabrication sprint. Therefore, the objective is to combine the skills and knowledge acquired throughout the weeks prior to the challenge in order to ideate a small project that is connected to their personal interests and individual or collective interventions. The students have to use the technology and equipment available and focus on the specific skills they have already acquired during the past weeks. This is set as a primary goal to foster the students’ capacity to design and conceptualize their projects with the tools and skills they might have available, without limiting the possibilities of what they could achieve. In addition, the challenges align with the MDEF design studio in an effort to connect each challenge topic to the current status of the design interventions of the students. As mentioned before, the intention is to weave the two courses together in order to enhance both for the benefit of the students’ projects. The design studio provides a critical context in relation to the technologies developed during Fab Academy, and in return the Fab Academy course yields the skills and knowledge to help physicalize these concepts.

#### Weekly Classes:
This classes are given every two weeks on Wednesday and Thursdays from 10 Am to 14.00 Pm (CET time) for two weeks in a row.
Students will have to do some small guided tasks to achieve a deep understanding of the subject area, it's technology flows, the fabrication constraints, and it's design possibilities.

- **Lab life:** In addition to the lectures, there are 2 lab days each week where students have access the digital fabrication equipment and personal help with projects.Fabrication time through booking system,this happens every Tuesday and Friday. (Days could be adapted depending collitions with opther programs and needs)

#### Micro-Challenge week:
Are Intensive weeks, where students will have to apply the knowledge and skills from previous weeks in a group projects aligned to their research interventions.

![](/assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-2/digital_prototyping_for_design_2.jpg)

## Schedule

**The following timetable is provisional and may undergo modifications and adaptations during the course.**

=== "Module 1"

    - **Days:** 17-18/01
    - 2d fabrication (laser cut & Vinyl cuter)
    - Parametric design
    - Sustainable practices: Biomaterials

=== "Module 2"

    - **Days:** 31/01 , 01/02
    - Aditive Fabrication (Paste extruder)
    - 3D Scanning
    - Sustainable practices: Growing materials

=== "Micro-challenge I"

    - **Days:** 13-14-15-16/02
    - **Content:** DPD + Measuring the world


=== "Module 3"

    - **Days:** 21/02 , 22/02
    - CNC manufacturing - Scaling manufacturing in distributed world
    - Moulding and casting
    - Sustainable practices: Waste materials

=== "Micro-challenge II"

    - **Days:** 05-06-07-08/03
    - **Content:** DPD + Designing with Extended Intelligence


![](/assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-2/digital_prototyping_for_design_3.jpg)

## Materials

All materials needed for the course will be provided by the faculty. The students are required to bring to the classes their own students toolkit and the programming boards given to them at the start of the academic year, other development boards, sensors and actuators will be provided during the classes. Bring in your laptop with the proper software installed prior to the class if required (emails will be sent prior to the classes regarding this aspect).


## Deliverables

Each student builds a portfolio on their respective websites that documents their mastery of different certificates taken individually along each week and their integration into a final, larger project, related to their masters thesis development.

By the conclusion of the course, students are expected to have submitted:

### Weekly Task Posts:

Each student should have contributed a total of 8 reflective posts throughout the course. These posts should comprehensively detail their experiences, learnings, and challenges encountered during the weekly tasks and the microchallenges.

### Challenge Repositories:
In collaboration with their assigned group, each pair of students is required to create and maintain 3 distinct repositories. These repositories should meticulously document the entire development process of the challenges assigned during the course.

**The DESIGN FOR PROTOTYPING COURSE is PASSED by growth progress rather than a global goal, for successful completion of each weekly assignment and challenge is a must.**

![](/assets/images/2023-24/year-1/t-2/digital_prototyping_for_design_4.jpg)

## Grading Method

- **Only the documentation into their webpages will be taken in account for evaluation**
- The weekly standards and grading will be presented during the weekly classes.
- Prototyping process understanding ,workflows and evolving best practices will seriously be taken in account.
- Weekly tasks are assessed by faculty members, while challenges involve a self-evaluation component, encouraging students to reflect on their individual contributions, collaboration, problem-solving, and overall learning outcomes

| Percentage  | Description                         |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------|
| 35%         | Individual reflection post (Weekly tasks)         |
| 65%         | Micro-challenges repositories (Academic level, Open content, Involement, Explosion)   |


!!! ects "European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)"

    {{ ects }} ECTS

## Additional Resources

### Course documentation
- [FabLab BCN doc](https://fablabbcn-projects.gitlab.io/learning/educational-docs/mdef/classes/digitalprototyping/)

### Sites
- [Fab 18 Conference](https://fab23.fabevent.org/)
- [FAB Labs Community (fablabs.io)](https://www.fablabs.io/labs)
- [Academany](http://docs.academany.org/)
- [Inventory](https://docs.google.com/a/fablabbcn.org/spreadsheets/d/1U-jcBWOJEjBT5A0N84IUubtcHKMEMtndQPLCkZCkVsU/pub?single=true&gid=0&output=html)
- [Fab Foundation](https://fabfoundation.org/)
- [SCOPES DF Project](https://www.scopesdf.org/)
- [Fab Event](https://fabevent.org/)
- [Fabacademy](http://fabacademy.org/)
- [Fab Academy Staff](https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabacademy/2019/staff)
- [Jobs](http://jobs.fabeconomy.com/)

## Faculty

{{ insert_faculty() }}