Seven Technology Trends for Design

Borrowing some slides from Autodesk Labs VP, Brian Mathews, plus interjecting some of my own, last month I gave a net meeting presentation on my take of the 7 technology trends of the design industry. The context was - at Autodesk Labs, we have lots of ideas - in fact too many - more than we can ever build prototypes for. So given that we have to make hard choices, what should we use as our guiding principles? So rather than focus on a specific feature of an existing product, we often ponder these 7 trends.

1. Human-Centered Design - Working with computers should be more natural by having computers learn how to adapt to humans instead of humans learning how to use computers.

2. Analog to Digital - Reality can be captured into digital form through means like cameras and scanners.

3. Cloud Data and Search - As data gets larger and more complex, better ways to find what you want are not only desirable but required.

4. Cloud Computing - As problems get more complicated to solve, leveraging many computers provdies a cost effective way to provide the answers. Why use 1 computer for 200 minutes when it's just as easy to use 200 computers for a minute?

5. Digital Reality - It is possible to take computer models and make them indistinguishable from the real thing?

6. Digital to Analog - Given a computer model, it is often desirable to have a physical representation with devices such as 3D printers. 

7. Software as a Service - We want to investigate alternatives to running applications on the desktop as well as ways to improve the desktop experience via web services and other means.

See if you can match the existing Labs technology preview to its technology trend. Given this information, what would you suggest we consider? Let us know what you think at thelabs@autodesk.com.

Being transparent about why we do what we do is alive in the lab.