User involvement in design: a case study of using an AM-enabled mass customisation and personalisation (MC&P) toolkit

In the era of Mass Customisation and Personalisation (MC&P), users are incorporated in the design of their own products more explicitly with the aid of toolkits. There are nearly 1000 toolkits for MC&P already available to be accessed by Internet users. However, only a few of them are specifically AM-enabled, such as CellCycle and MakieMaker. This article focuses on a case study that employs user observation and questionnaire methods to highlight the benefits of MC&P. It is based on a toolkit designed by Loughborough Design School for customisation and personalisation of a lampshade, the manufacture of which was facilitated by Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies. The case study suggests that the reflections of the participant’s experience with MC&P, his quality of interaction with the toolkit and the value of the MC&P product produced through AM have practical implication for users, designers and software developers to improve user experience of MC&P and to enhance the value of consumer product designs.