Interview: A Dozen Questions with Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews - Part 2 …

Tweet        

We are back with Part 2 of our interview with one of the most influential people in the world of CAD. Of course we are talking about Autodesk Labs Vice President, Brian Mathews. In Part 1 of our interview we got to learn about Mr. Mathew's career and how he came to work for Autodesk as well as his feelings on the importance of education.

Now let's get to it and finish our Dozen Questions with Brian Mathews.

The State of Technology

CM: Do you think there will ever be a 10’ / “lean back” experience to CAD?
BM: I think what you are getting at will happen but I would call it the 10” / “lean forward”. One example we are already seeing with that is the mobile tablets. They are tactile, they’re interactive. They’re not mouse and keyboard because I think what you are trying to get at is “get away from the mouse and keyboard interface”. I think there is this lean forward interface and that’s 10 inches right? You’re leaning forward into the thing.

Autodesk Labs VP Brian Mathews at AU 2010 ...Are we moving away from keyboard and mouse”? Absolutely. You saw some of the stuff we did six years ago with multi-touch screens as wall-sized screens where you could interact and collaborate with multiple people around things. I think if you were at the HP booth at AU, this year, you saw some of these very tactile interfaces being shown that were collaborative. So yes, I think there are many ways we are getting away from just keyboard and mouse. Part of this is what I was talking about in the press briefing, about this whole reality capture concept.

I think the point is working with computers more seamless and natural, and more human-centric, rather than machine centric. Traditionally you had to read CAD manuals to get the machine to do what we wanted it to do on its terms. Now everything is flipped around and it is the machine trying to adapt to the way we work through better sensors and interfaces.

CM: Why do you suppose there is a glaring lack of “social” activity the CAD world? How can we incorporate and apply the cognitive surplus to this industry?
BM: There are different aspects of “social”. Heck AutoCAD has got about 650 thousand Facebook fans. Then you have the cloud services. When you have people moving applications to the cloud like AutoCAD WS, several million people are now collaborating. So it may not be social like Twitter/Facebook traditional social, but in the CAD space the ability to collaborate around design is something these cloud-based solutions naturally do. You could even look at something like Buzzsaw, it started a long time ago and was rode that wave of not just having design, but allowed teams or enterprises of enterprises of people to collaborate around design data. That was something that started over 10 years ago and has grown.

City rendering from Project Galileo ...Now you are seeing things like AutoCAD WS. You are seeing people do things like using Facebook as part of the design process. That is where something like an Autodesk Labs property, Project Bluestreak, is all about.

At the same time, I think there is a long way to go. I think we are very early in this field of bringing social into design. I think you are just starting to see the beginning. So I think it’s unfair to say it isn’t happening. But I think it’s fair to say that we’re just at the beginning and there’s alot more that is going to happen in this space.

CM: If atoms are the new bits, then what will be the new atoms? In other words, what do you think is the next big thing?
BM: I think the next big thing isn’t just a “thing”, it’s the meta idea. This is the combination of other ideas. If you think of a symphony, you have all the different instruments, but the next big thing is bringing those instruments together. And that’s happening by bringing all these different technologies together at different scales, from the very small to the very large. By bringing things together through the democratization and access, lowering the cost of access to this technology [we are] making it easier to use. We are seeing this convergence of different types of data, different disciplines, and different technologies coming together. I think the next big thing is that meta-idea.

If were to talk about things beyond that: nano-technology, biotechnology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary design. When you have infinite computing you can literally run evolutionary simulations in the cloud. I think all of those things will be the next “next”.

The This and That

CM: Can you tell me who comes up with those fantastic project names in Autodesk Labs?
BM: Oh, no one person or group.  Often it is the subject matter experts behind a particular Labs technology.  Commercial products have a formal process for naming at a more corporate level, but Labs projects allow for the individual teams to have some fun.  Many are inside jokes with double-meanings that only employees get.

CM: Salvador Dali was known to sit in his empty tub and creatively sketch (which is awesome). I like to go for a drive with my dog (who is also awesome) to let my mind wonder. What do you do clear your head and have creative thoughts?
BM: I am road biking fan. That is where I go to meditate and think about how to solve design problems. On the bike!

CM: Are you a video game player? If not, what are some of your geekier pastimes?
BM: I’m interested in all the technologies that games use such as 3D graphics, real-time physics simulations, sound, and human-computer interfaces, but I’m not so much into the games themselves.  I’m the guy who needs an Xbox Kinect so I can understand how it works, how to hack it, and what you can do with it.  That’s the game.

CM: What does the 10-year-old inside of you want to achieve in the next 10 years?
BM: I always got excited by virtual reality kind of environments or experiences. I wasn’t into drugs so I wanted to have my alternate reality be more reality based. Think of Project Metropolis we did at AU where we surrounded the audience with 48 HD projectors that was a real time simulation of an entire city. That was something we did as a Labs project.

3D Gorrilla model from 123Dapp.com ...I like to build new things as an entrepreneur. Things around technology experiences. My background is in computer graphics, I love computer graphics, like graphics at a major scale, that’s immersive and allows you to have a kind of alternate reality.

CM: If you were a sock, what color and type of sock would you be?
BM: A black 3D printed sock. Because then it’s personally manufactured and designed to fit me exactly. And it would probably be a biking sock since I am a road biking fan. Of course, it has to be self-designed and therefore self-manufactured on a 3D printer. That is the future of course, printing our own stuff.

It’s not often that we are in awe of people, but this interview left our heads spinning! We are going to go and see if we can do some mental pull-ups or something so we can better understand the workings of a mind like this. Oh who are we kidding, we’re just going to go write something insane and meaningless on Google+ or play a game! Be sure to keep up with Kung Fu Drafter, you never know who we might be sitting down with next for a dozen questions …

- KFD -

Image credits: John Steven Fernandez, Autodesk, and Robin Caper.