Cell Cycle is an interactive application by the Nervous System studio that enables people to design and fabricate their own jewelery. The studio takes a computational approach by mimicking and simulating processes and patterns found in nature.
Cell Cycle currently has an online interface available and an iPad app is also in development. The video below shows the iPad interface in action at their recent Reaction exhibit.
Jessica Rosenkrantz, one of the founders of Nervous System was kind enough to speak to us about their approach to design.
All of our product lines, whether they are “pre-designed” or custom are generated by software that we write. I think it’s nice for people to see and engage in the same design process we use.
Rosenkrantz makes an interesting observation about customer behavior:
I would say many of our customers enjoying playing with the three tools we have for custom fabrication online but end up purchasing one of the designs we have pre-created. [...] Sometimes I wonder if this is because the software applications aren’t the most user-friendly or if people just don’t have confidence in their designing abilities.
Nervous System’s applications refine the creation process into a smooth, yet powerful workflow. There really is no valid comparison to the infinitely more complex, conventional CAD design process. Customer apprehension could be compared to gastronomy. We may enjoy dabbling in the kitchen at home, but if we are to dine at an expense, we have certain expectations that makes going to a professional chef a logical choice. Likewise for design, it may make sense for customers to get a signed and certified Nervous System piece.
Being able to produce one-of-a-kind pieces is one of the main advantages of digital fabrication. The use of computational processes lends itself to Nervous System’s iterative design approach. In many respects the software process is the ‘original’ and each physical piece is an iteration of this meta-design process.
Certainly, people seem to really love having a one of a kind design though. Our Dendrite line has two series of necklaces in it the Full moon necklaces and Coral necklaces where each piece is one of a kind and those has been very popular with more than 1300 unique pieces having been sold already.
These are impressive figures and Nervous System has been able to expand their business to meet customer demand. But perhaps the real question people out there may want to know is: When a customer creates a design, what happens between ‘add to cart’ and ‘ring of door bell’?
When the customer clicks add to cart the data from the unsmoothed mesh is saved to our database in OBJ format. And it shows up in our order processing site with the rest of our regular non-custom orders. We download the OBJ and run it through a processing applet on our side that runs the catmull subdivisions to produce the smoothed mesh and saves it to an STL. We upload the STL to shapeways.
Images courtesy of Nervous System
Thanks for your time Jessica!