ICoRD'13

No one trajectory leads to becoming a design researcher. This paper is an interim overview of one case of a designer who became a design researcher. Through concerns derived from experience as a designer and a design teacher, and learning from observations of children designing, some fundamental questions were formulated under the common theme of design cognition. Two major lines of research were undertaken over the years: first, modeling and measuring design reasoning. This is done with linkography, which is a system for the notation and analysis of design activities based on protocols. With linkography light can be shed on the structure of the design process and its quality, especially its creativity. Second, visual thinking in design and primarily the generation of sketches and the use of visual stimuli are investigated. Experimental work confirms the importance of visual thinking in designing.

Recent years have witnessed new research interest in the study of complex systems architectures, in domains like biological systems, social networks etc. These developments have opened up possibility of investigating architectures of complex engineering systems on similar lines. Architecture of a system can be abstracted as a graph, wherein the nodes/vertices correspond to components and edges correspond to interconnections between them. Graphs representing system architecture have revealed motifs or patterns. Motifs are recurring patterns of 3-noded (or 4, 5 etc.) sub-graphs of the graph. Complex biological and social networks have shown the presence of some triad motifs far in excess (or short) of their expected values in random networks. Some of these over(under) represented motifs have explained the basic functionality of systems, e.g. in sensory transcription networks of biology overrepresented motifs are shown to perform signal processing tasks. This suggests purposeful, selective retention of these motifs in the studied biological systems. Engineering systems also display over(under) represented motifs. Unlike biological and social networks, engineering systems are designed by humans and offer opportunity for investigation based on known design rules. We show that over(under) represented motifs in engineering systems are not purposefully retained/avoided to perform functions but are a natural consequence of design by decomposition. We also show that biological and social networks also display signs of synthesis by decomposition. This opens up interesting opportunity to investigate these systems through their observed decomposition.

In the past 10 years design thinking has become a popular buzzword in the design and business communities alike. While much has been written on the subject in both academic and popular literature no consensus has been reached as to its actual definition and nature. The following study employs a semiotic analysis in order to identify lexical patterns that can provide us with insight into many underlying principles of design thinking.

Advances in design research representations and models are needed as the interfaces between disciplines in design become blurred and overlapping, and as design encompasses more and more complex systems. A conceptual framework known as “Big-D” Design, as coined by Singapore’s newest national university (the Singapore University of Technology and Design or SUTD), may provide a meaningful and useful context for advancing design research. This paper is an initial examination of the implications for scientific design research on using this particular framework. As part of the analysis, the paper proposes a simplified decomposition of the broader concept in order to explore potential variation within this framework. It is found that many research objectives are better investigated when the broader design field is studied than in a singular category or domain of design. The paper concludes by recommending aggressive attempts to (1) arrive at a coherent set of terminology and research methodologies relative to design research that extend over at least all of technologically-enabled design and (2) perform epistemological and ontological studies of the relationship of engineering science and technologically-enabled design science as there is more overlap between them than is generally recognized.

Due to the specialization and professionalization of the design work, sharing the product information between the product development members has been important in the product development process. Quality Function Deployment is one of the effective methods that enables the development members to share the information of the product using the quality matrices that describes the relationship between design elements needed to be considered. This paper improves the quality matrices by introducing the multispace design model and the Interpretive structural modeling. The proposed quality matrices are applied to a disc brake design problem, and their applicability is confirmed.

This paper reports a case study of a multi-meeting engineering design project lasting 5 months, unlike most design studies that focus on a single meeting. The project involved an engineering consultancy for the design of a robot controller. The design team consisted of engineers with different backgrounds. Eight sequential design meetings were studied using protocol analysis. The video recordings of these meetings were transcribed and then segmented and coded using an ontologically-based coding scheme. The analysis of these meetings focused on differences in the distributions of design issues and syntactic design processes between adjacent meetings. Statistically significant differences between some adjacent meetings were observed, which implies changes in design behavior between those meetings.

The paper proposes a modular functional modeling framework, which aims at integrating the different functional modeling perspectives, relevant to different disciplines. The results of two extensive literature studies on diverse functional modeling approaches proposed in a variety of disciplines are consolidated. These studies identified specific needs for an integrated functional modeling approach to support interdisciplinary conceptual design. The presented framework aims at fulfilling these needs. It consists of a variety of associated views, represented through different matrices. This matrix-based representation facilitates the analysis of different functional modeling perspectives and their interdependencies. Finally, the implications of the presented approach are discussed.

In this paper the design process is viewed as a process of increasing the information of the product/system. Therefore, it is natural to investigate the design process from an information theoretical point of view. The design information entropy is introduced as a state that reflects both complexity and refinement, and it is argued that it can be useful as some measure of design effort and design quality. The concept of design information entropy also provides a sound base for defining creativity as the process of selecting areas for expanding the design space in useful direction, “to think outside the box”, while the automated activity of design optimization is focused, so far, on concept refinement, within a confined design space. In this paper the theory is illustrated on the conceptual design of an unmanned aircraft, going through concept generation, concept selection, and parameter optimization.

Design fixation is considered to be a major factor influencing engineering idea generation. When fixated, designers unknowingly replicate the features from their own initial ideas or presented examples. The study reported in this paper investigates the effects of warnings about the undesirable features on design fixation. The authors hypothesize that if designers are given warnings about the undesirable example features along with the reasons for those warnings, fixation to those features can be mitigated. In order to investigate this hypothesis, a controlled experiment is conducted with novice designers. The participants are randomly assigned to one of the three experiment groups: a Control, Fixation or Defixation. Participants in all the groups generate ideas for the same design problem. It is observed that even when the warnings are present, designers replicate the flawed features in their ideas. Further, this paper compares said result with the findings in the existing literature.

A 70–80 passenger transport aircraft has been designed using third generation MDO technique. The MDO framework is used to parametrically explore the design space consisting of variables from aerodynamics, structure and control disciplines thereby studying the effects of alternative aerodynamics, structural and material concepts. It employs a panel code for aerodynamic analysis of aircraft and a finite element method for wing level structural optimization and weight estimation. The outputs from these codes are used to perform mission analysis and performance estimation. Stability constraints are implemented by calculating the amount of control power required for static stability and design concepts that do not fulfill the constraints are rejected. This integrated design environment is completely automated. The aircraft is optimized for maximum range using genetic algorithm.

This paper explores the use of a database of effects to facilitate generative activity and access to information. Some design challenges involve applications with which designers or design teams may not be familiar. This can readily be addressed by consultations with subject experts. A challenge associated with this, however, is access to expert and effective dialogue and information. Key to dialogue between a specialist expert and designer is framing of questions and understanding context. In order to improve access to expert information, a database of effects, call the Effects Database, arising from TRIZ, has been extended to enhance use across a wide range of domains by including psychological and design principles. It includes over 300 design-relevant technical effects and principles from physics, chemistry, geometry, design, and psychology. The aim of the database and associated procedures is to provide ready access to expertise at any stage within the design process.

Design creativity is often defined using the terms “

novel

” and “

appropriate

”. Measuring creativity within design outputs then relies on developing metrics for these terms that can be applied to the assessment of designs. By comparing design appropriateness to design quality, this paper develops a systematic method of assessing one element of design creativity. Three perspectives from literature are used; the areas in which quality is manifest, the categories into which quality assessment criteria fall, and how well criteria are achieved. The output of the method is a relative ranking of quality for a set of designs, with detailed understanding of the particular strengths and weaknesses of each. The process of assessment is demonstrated through a case study of twelve similar designs. Through such analysis insight into the influences on quality can be gained, which in turn may allow greater control and optimisation of the qualities that design outputs display.

Cognitive products use cognitive functions to work autonomously and reduce the amount of interaction necessary from the user. However, to date no method exists to support the integration of cognitive functions in common products. This paper presents a method that supports designers when exploring ideas for new cognitive products. The method is based on functions/actions that humans perform while using a product, as well as functions/actions performed by the product itself, all of which can be consistently modelled in an activity diagram. Initially, the system boundary of the product is drawn around the functions/actions performed by the product. Cognitive functions are then identified that are currently performed by the user, and can possibly be integrated into a new cognitive concept. The resulting concept is specified systematically by interpreting the system boundary of the product to include cognitive functions. This method has been verified via design projects performed by interdisciplinary student design teams, and an example of this work is presented.

Cross transfer of ideas from one target domain to another with analogies as triggers to generate new ideas is being studied in various fields. But the role of analogy in the creative process for both generating new ideas and exploring high degree of novelty in product form generation needs to be investigated. Using an analogy can help transcend the obvious to the unexpected by forming a confluence of two mediated thoughts, guided by creative interpretations. The important aspect of generating creative ideas is the ability to use the source analogy for a resultant design solution by interpreting it in terms of the design task at hand. The study analyses the creative ideas that emerges from the design solution, specifically focusing on the use of analogy for form exploration. By using the analogical inference, transition from one domain idea to another opens the exploration of novel viewpoints and numerous alternatives. Such a malleable approach of creative generation can yield novel ideas and forms. The paper explores how the use of analogy can facilitate idea generation and allow form exploration. This research examines idea generation issues of creativity by the use of multiple source analogies to help develop multiple domain concepts threw case study method. The study collects empirical data from observations and design outputs during a design session. The aim is to articulate the influencing effect of the use of analogy on factors of form exploration. The goal is to create a value proposition that designers can use to develop novel ideas as well as expressive form generation through radical exploration.

Engineering changes (ECs) are considered as cost and time-consuming. Based on the understanding of EC as a specific representative of cycles within development processes, the implementation of ECs is initiated by a target deviation, which leads to a decision over different alternatives of the implementation process of the particular EC. This decision is based according to literature and industrial practices within the field of process design methods on an expert discussion, without a formalized and explicit consideration of different change options. This paper presents computational process synthesis (CPS) as a support for the decision making of change options. The CPS is embedded within a procedural model for the decision process of ECs. Besides, this paper presents a case-study, which describes the application of the presented procedural model as well as the CPS.

The use of morphological analysis as a tool to aid concept generation is examined. Two principal limitations of the method are highlighted; (1) the lack of details generated for system concepts and (2) the explosion of combinatorial possibilities in the use of morphological matrices. The authors propose a method to support the generation of detailed conceptual ideas through functional combinations and use of options matrices, facilitating an intelligent exploration of the design space. In the options matrices, functions that are highly coupled are grouped together and idea generation is performed on the functional combinations based on identified innovation challenges. A subset of highly coupled functions are extracted from the morphological matrices and systematically integrated to form system level concepts. The resulting system concepts have greater design details compared to those generated through traditional morphological analysis techniques, allowing a designer to make informed decisions regarding their feasibility for the design purpose. An example of the proposed method is provided in the design of a seating chassis for automotive applications.

The objective of this research is to understand the use of internal analogies in the early phases of engineering design. Empirical studies are used to identify the following: type and role of analogies in designing; levels of abstraction of search and transfer of analogies; role of experience of designers on using analogies; and, effect of analogies on quantity and quality of solution space. The following are the important results: analogies from natural and artificial domains are used to develop requirements and solutions in the early phases of engineering design; experience of designers and nature of design problem influence the usage of analogies; analogies are explored and unexplored at different levels of abstraction of the SAPPhIRE model, and; the quantity and quality of solution space depend on the number of analogies used.

This paper investigates the in-depth cognitive levels at the early stage of idea generation for craftsmen and designers. Examining this early stage may explain the fundamental thoughts in observing and defining design problems. We conducted an experiment using think-aloud protocol, where verbalized thoughts were analyzed using a concept network method based on associative concept analysis. Furthermore, we identified semantic relationships based on Factor Analysis. The findings showed that craftsmen tended to activate low-weighted associative concepts at in-depth cognitive level with a smaller number of polysemous features, thus explaining their concerns about tangible-related issues, such as proportion and shape. Designers, however, activated highly weighted associative concepts with more polysemous features, and they were typically concerned with intangible issues, such as surroundings context (i.e., eating culture) and users’ affective preferences (i.e., companion, appeal).

Jewellery has universal appeals that transcend borders of countries and cultures. There are examples of Indian jewellery being influenced by European tools, technology and in turn European jewellery drawing inspirations from Indian jewellery motifs and culture. Indian and European jewellery styles due to this mutually wholesome relationship have common grounds for a comparative study, observing similarities and understanding differences. A traditional Indian goldsmith works in anonymity, rarely seeking personal name or recognition. Therefore, in India a style begets a name that is not associated with a particular design house, yet has a distinctly different identity.

Kundan

is one such example that uses an intricate frame of gold for setting minimally polished diamonds. A European master jeweller on the other hand has a style synonymous with their design houses. Names such as Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels and Tiffany are few such examples. They are identifiable from other comparable styles by use of distinctive motifs, treatment of form, usage of specific cuts of gemstones and types of setting. These characteristics give a logical basis for comparison and understanding features of form. Based upon these, Indian style of

Kundan

is compared with European contemporary styles. A treatise on the subject elucidates how a typical Indian jewellery style is analogous to European Master Jewellery styles. It draws parallels between these styles and provides a structure for studies pertaining to form in domain of jewellery. Such studies in domains of design are new, this subject gains importance by sharing deep insights from pioneering research in subject matter.

Indian jewellery has a character of its own. It is rich in form and crafted in intricate details. Motifs often identifiable by their individual names are the fundamental building blocks. They are used in combination with each other to make a form cluster. These form clusters are repetitive and appear throughout the body of jewellery as a coherent theme. Complex Structures in gold, forms created using these motifs, are numerous and are made in a variety of ways. They track construction details to conform to body contours, for best presentation view they are often worn on a junction such as neck or wrist. An article therefore, is best understood in form with reference to anthropometric dimensions used as an underlying framework. The articles specifically chosen for study are neckpieces, as they are the largest in size and central part of a particular set. They are directly in line of sight for visual appreciation and therefore gain further importance as lead pieces in jewellery design. This study expounds on diverse types of forms and their characteristic features. A structure is presented by a comparative study that is expected to provide orientation, define key aspects of form and parameters. Outcome of this study is for benefit of jewellers as well as clients by better articulation of jewellery forms and thereby clear understanding of clients’ expectations.

The research paper aims to examine the influence of ‘Product design’ on buying decision making in the Indian urban market sector, focussing on visual product aesthetics; the characteristics that create a product’s appearance and have the capacity to affect observers and consumers [

1

]. Product design, specifically the ‘Visual Aesthetic’ [Visual Aesthetics (VA), for the purpose of this study, is defined to entail the colour, size and proportions, materials and design expression of the designed product] has been recognised as a key strategic variable in securing or defending a marketplace advantage. This question will be examined in the context of Indian social, cultural and economic systems and with regards to the relative position of visual aesthetics in the decision making process of young adults in the Indian urban consumer market.

Today’s world is becoming increasingly visually oriented and logos have become a prime asset of companies. Logos are absolutely essential in branding and brand building and aims to facilitate cross-language marketing. The aim of this paper is to translate and expand the concept of logo effectiveness in the field of visual logo designs by identifying and understanding various factors that influence consumer perception of logos. The current research investigates numerous factors which influence the effectiveness of logo design including human perception factor. The study reveals that effective logo design adheres to seven elemental standards that all designers should be aware of. These principles may serve as key elements for judging whether the design and style systematically delivers the message to its potential audience. Degree of logo effectiveness is function of simplicity, versatility, memorability, relevance, timelessness, quality and appropriateness where as the psychological factor acts as multiplier of any one or more of the above factors. Logo design is an explicit function of shape factor (S) Color factor (C) and Font factor (F) and Human Perception Factor (P). The research includes case studies from different industrial backgrounds including automobile, sports, food products and beverages. The research classifies and studies different types of logos such as ones based on shapes, words, letters and Graphics. The work also addressed the issue of Good and bad logos. The study developed a set of guidelines for the effective logo design.

Use of Narratives for teaching science and technology at secondary school level has gained strength in recent years. Many approaches and explorations have been done by researchers like Arthur Stinner, Aaron Isabelle, Stephan Klassen and Yannis Hadzigeorgiou. With the spirit of extending existing work in domain of teaching science using narratives, a General Narrative Schema, (also known as Epistemological Narrative Schema or ENS) for describing a scientific inquiry event in context of cultural tradition of science was developed to assist secondary school science content writers in designing narratives to be used for explaining science concepts. Control group experiments were conducted with secondary school students in Mumbai to test the effect of ENS on certain aspect of science concept learning. The control group was taught using lesson from their existing text book while the Experimental group was taught the same content but modified and delivered in the Form of a Narrative designed using the Epistemological Narrative Schema. The posttest for evaluating difference in short term memory recall of students of the delivered lesson showed significant difference in the mean score of Experimental group versus the Control group. The experimental group scored significantly better than the Control group in Posttest results. This experiment strengthens the case for introducing narrative based approaches for designing science lessons at secondary school level.

The developer-built apartments in Mumbai are advertized as ultimate symbols of iconic lifestyles. Referred to by evocative names, these are self-sufficient, gated microcosms. These advertisements claim uniqueness in terms of amenities; each attempting to outdo the other by projecting a more exclusive lifestyle. They declare: Purchase houses, acquire lifestyles. This paper intends to examine the relationship between lifestyle conception and house composition. A case-study of the design process of an apartment-housing project in Mumbai offers insights into this lifestyle-architecture combination at the moment of conception. The assumption here is that the space and moment of design allow unselfconscious forms to become apparent and be subjected to interrogation. Also, design itself might offer critical positions to view the relationship between

where we live

and

how we live

. The results of the case-study analysis point to how

new

lifestyles require the incorporation of

other

diverse spaces usually never associated with urban residences. The shape of this lifestyle emerges in the form of the super-built-up space, beyond the individual dwelling unit; the

value

-

addition

space that belongs to all and none in particular. A particular lifestyle-architecture configuration also seems to posit specific relations between the individual dwelling unit, the collective apartment and the urban neighborhood. Also brought forth is the underlying assumption of aesthetic congruence between lifestyle and house design.

This paper presents a concept of meta-design catalogs for cognitive products. Mechatronic and cognitive products usually demand multidisciplinary hardware and software solutions and while catalogs exist to support domain specific-design, to date there is no support for finding non-obvious and alternative solutions for cognitive products. The meta-design catalogs for cognitive functions proposed in this paper provide a link between abstract functions and hardware/software making it possible to find non-obvious and alternative solutions. They also make re-use of existing solutions possible by abstracting from the specific to an abstract pattern.

So far the development of Eco-efficiency in home appliances has only concentrated on their technological attributes, overlooking the communication of Eco-efficient qualities through the aesthetical appearance of such appliances i.e. a meaning to be transmitted to the user. Technical attributes are communicated through extrinsic features i.e. labelling, branding, packing [

1

]. These are considered as semiotic content (not concerned with semantics) and give information regarding the product independent of meaning, and as such have no direct relation to the product appearance or character [

2

]. This paper will explain the application of product semantic theory to re-design the product characters of home appliances which communicate their Eco-efficient qualities through their intrinsic features within a non-instrumental product experience. The final output will be a set of design guidelines consisting of 6 product characters—

Futuristic, Feminine, Unconventional, Practical, Simple, Smart

—which appliance designers can apply. Product characters are adjectival constructs or visual metaphors [

3

,

4

]. Design theorists have pointed out that companies which are able to communicate a specific meaning (such as Eco-efficiency) through their product appearance can achieve a competitive market advantage [

5

]. Athavankar [

6

] cited product semantics as having amongst others 2 core goals, (1) Improving user-product interaction. (2) Demystifying complex technologies. The intention of semantics as a design theory was to apply linguistic theories into a design process to develop `readable’ or `self-evident’ products through easy to apply methods [

7

].

Indian sense of the beautiful concerned with pure emotion applied to evolve an external appearance of a clearly defined area of automobile. Having gotten an idea of Indian aesthetics, the points and keywords that were closest to the insights gained were penned down. The process of defining Indian Aesthetics started with sketching forms that inculcated physical and emotional inspirations gained through research. Eleven primary forms were created in styrene foam, giving a tangible form to my verbal definition of ideas and emotions. A palette of contemporary Indian volumes, surfaces and lines, was hence created. It is this pallet that has been used later in coming up with an Automotive form that suggests a new style of cars for the world, the Indian Style.

Understanding of emotions and the appraisal patterns associated with emotions is vital in the fields such as user experience design, product design, advertising and fashion. People respond with different emotions to the same situation depending on how they interpret, or appraise the situation. It is important for a designer to understand the differentiation in emotions in order to design emotion-laden products. But assessment and mapping of emotions is always a tough task, because the topic itself is subjective and abstract. It is in this context that this paper presents an approach to differentiate emotions and to map emotions on the basis of the related appraisal patterns.

The paper aims at deriving the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) for force magnitude recognition between left and right index finger of human hand. The experiment involves establishment of an internal reference stimulus, using the left index fingers of the hand, by the subject, which is perceived and matched under contra-lateral force matching paradigm. A combination of virtual environment and a force sensor was used to derive the just noticeable difference for index-finger force application. Six voluntary healthy young adult subjects in the age group of 22–30 years were instructed to produce reference forces by left index finger and to reproduce the same amount of force by the right index finger, when the subjects were confident enough of matching same amount of force, the force values of the both the left and right index finger were recorded simultaneously for 5 s at 10 Hz. Five different trials were conducted for different force levels ranging from 2 to 5 N. The percentage real JND and absolute JND were derived for all the subjects. It was found that the Force-JND obtained was approximately 10 % across all subjects. Results also show that subjects tend to underestimate force at high force levels and overestimate at low force levels. The results obtained can be used as basic building block for the calibration of virtual reality based minimally invasive surgery related tasks and force based virtual user interfaces ranging from touch pad to assistive tools.

Conventional Fitts’s model for human movement task finds a common application in modern day interactive computer systems and ergonomics design. According to Fitts’s law the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. This paper describes experimental process for prediction of minimum movement time, in a force-variation based human performance task involving right index finger. In this study we have made an attempt to extend the applicability of the conventional Fitts’s model for a force based virtual movement task, without taking position into account and evaluate human performance metrics for such tasks. An experiment was conducted in which 6 healthy young adult subject’s in the age group of 22–30 years performed force based movement tasks. During each trial, subjects were asked to reach an initial force bar of given thickness W Newtons, corresponding to allowable tolerance. Once the subject’s had reached initial level, they were instructed to reach out the target force bar of same thickness W as quickly as possible and bring it back to the initial force level bar, thereby completing 1 iteration. Time required for 10 such iteration was noted for each subject. The results from the experiment show that the relationship between movement time and index of difficulty for force tasks are well described by Fitts’s law in visual guided, force-based virtual movement task.

Well-being—individual and social—achieved through sustainable development is undoubtedly the overarching agenda for global public policy today. What could be the role of design in this new frame? The core question motivating this review is: How can design help us achieve well-being as individuals and society at the same time? The first part of this paper reviews the literature to frame the dilemma of social well-being. The second part reviews existing approaches to resolve social dilemmas. The third part reviews the current approaches to design for well-being. This is followed by a discussion about implications for design for achieving social well-being objectives, and an agenda, opportunities and key questions for research are outlined.

Many IT companies in India and across the globe have “User experience” (UX) associates to support UI and Usability. Many of these companies have a well organized UX practice with their own targets, profit and loss statements. Some of the companies boast of a having support of extensive Usability Labs and user testing infrastructure. The billing of usability testing services is much higher than the UI design and usability review services. The IT services companies have a model of offshore development for cost reduction and many usability labs are underutilized. The investment to set-up and run a usability lab is made with the objective of winning additional business and show more value to clients. There are a very few projects which really need detailed UX participation, user research and user testing through usability labs. Usability labs are expensive to establish and maintain. This brings us to the questions of ROI and whether the high cost of usability lab infrastructure is justified. This paper looks at the various aspects and business models which can help an IT company decide whether to set-up a usability lab or not and what can be an ideal model to sustain it.

A new kind of human computer interface using electrical activity of muscles, known as Muscle computer Interface (muCI) has been developed by researchers. With an intention of unfolding current status of muCIs, original research articles, review articles, reports, books, news etc. from authentic printed and online sources involving different search engines and libraries have been searched and critically studied by authors of present paper. This review has successfully highlighted developments of different sEMG based interfaces such as hand movement/gesture recognition interfaces, facial gesture recognition interfaces, myoelectric prosthetic arms, muscle fatigue analysis and other sort of interfaces. It has also covered the comparison between muCI and BCI, methodologies used for signal classification for muCI and the various shortcomings of the current muCIs. As muCI is still at its initial stages of development, it has been envisaged by the authors that present paper would help researchers to explore new ideas in emerging areas of muCI’s.

This paper concerns the development of a computer-aided platform to analyze workers’ postures and movements and ergonomically validate the design of device a man or woman may deal with. In particular, we refer to pick and place operations of food items on the display unit shelves. The paper describes three low-cost solutions that integrate two optical motion capture techniques (one based on web-cam and another on MS Kinect sensor) and two human modeling systems (Jack and LifeMod) with the main goal of determining the suitability of operators’ working conditions and, eventually, providing a feedback to the design step. The solutions have been tested considering a vertical display unit as case study. Preliminary results of the experimentation as well as main benefits and limits are presented. The results have been considered promising; however, we have planned to perform an acquisition campaign in the real environment, the supermarket.

The research described in this paper presents a methodology for evaluating the interaction design in new consumer products, and specifically in electronic products. The methodology is supported by mixed prototypes, i.e. prototypes made up of physical and virtual components, which are parametric and configurable, and which can be used by target users of the future product, to verify aspects of usability and preferences, and to check the satisfaction in use with respect to their needs and expectations.

Various studies investigated sitting posture while working at VDT for muscle response, posture and preference, to deduce recommendations for design. The posture assumption is a dynamic activity and is often resulted out of continuous visual and physical feedback processed on cognitive level to maintain optimum comfort. The parameters that affect the work station design such as visual display terminal height directly affect the posture and comfort. This paper discusses the study of postural angles such as Head inclination, Trunk bending, Trunk inclination and sEMG muscle activity of Neck Extensors, Erector Spinae, Sternocleidomastoid and Upper Trapezius muscles when a Visual Display Terminal (VDT) user is working at a visual display terminal. The conditions were simulated on a test-rig which was developed on the basis of anthropometric data obtained. The experiment was performed on eight Indian male subjects and the VDT height was varied from 69.5 to 119.5 cm, monitor inclination was varied as 0, 30, 60°. Changes in the sitting postural angles was recorded using photogrammetry, simultaneously sEMG muscle activity of the defined muscles was recorded, also the preferred position of the VDT at each height as responded by the subjects was recorded including preferred VDT height. It was observed that the thoracic bending varied between 120 and 155° which increased with increasing VDT height. The trunk inclination with reference to horizontal varied from 96 to 65°. Similarly neck inclination was observed to change by a span of approximately 40°. The preferred monitor height was observed to be in the range of 89.5–99.5 cm. The Upper Trapezius and Sternocleidomastoid showed variation in muscle activity but not related to monitor height. The Erector Spinae and Neck extensors however responded to the variation in monitor height in exactly opposite pattern. It was observed that the point of intersection of the normalized sEMG ratio curves lies in the span of preferred VDT height responded by the subjects. The potential application of this research is in design of Sit down console, computer work stations/consoles with or without adjustability features in Indian context.

Posture modeling for DHMs has significant effect on their usage in evaluation of product ergonomics. Direct manipulation schemes, such as joint level maneuvering for changing posture, are tedious and need more user intervention; complex scenarios are hardly simulated. This paper presents a high-level, relations based, description scheme for human postures and demonstrations for executing these descriptions using a digital human model (DHM). Here,

posture is viewed as a pattern of

relations

of body segments among themselves and with the environment. These relations are then used as the criteria for the novel description based control. A few basic postures have been derived using the conventional principal planes. The basic postures and the composition rules enable description of complex postures in an easy and unambiguous way. We discussed the issues involved in the execution of descriptions and developed methods to resolve the conflicts due to link fixations. This scheme is effective for both lower and higher level control. Illustrative examples from the implementation of the concepts in our native DHM ‘MayaManav’ are included.

Perception of a form is primarily an individualistic experience. Viewing a product may involve perception of its function or an inherent coding of an idea in its form. Perception to an object or an artifact is like having a visual dialog with the form. The literature suggests that, the visual experience of a work of art, such as painting, is constructed in the same way as the experience of any aspect of the everyday world. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to analyze every aspect of the viewer perception. But, if the viewing aspect itself is observed, it may offer interesting insights, on how the visual dialog to an artifact or designed object is formed by the observer. In this research paper, we aim to explore some of the viewing aspects of viewers, observed through the eye movement research (EMR). The study has been done with 17 participants to establish an understanding in viewing strategy and information processing, while viewing select abstract paintings. Six paintings were used in this study. Selection of the paintings was done as a combination that included Abstract expressionistic paintings by Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning, which are spatially spread compositions. Mary Abbot and W. Kandinsky’s directional and vigorous-movement stroke oriented paintings, and Piet Mondrian’s neo-plastic, pure geometrical painting. Images were shown to the participants to investigate viewing strategy through visual attention and exploratory behavior: diverse or specific; in order to understand how abstract art is viewed. It was observed that spatially spread, uniform paintings offered maximum components of information for the viewer to process while pure abstraction evoked high visual search. We further discuss which paintings evoked high attention and discuss qualitatively the possible reasoning. One significant finding is that existence of high information processing may not necessitate a high diverse exploratory behavior.

Sustainability is an ambitious interdisciplinary research agenda. The required knowledge, tools, methods and competencies being spread across wide-ranging areas pose challenges for researchers in sustainability who often specialize in one discipline. The efforts of researchers to understand sustainability comprehensively and contribute will be benefited if research outcomes are presented against an integrating framework for sustainability knowledge. Though general systems theory has this agenda, it targets consilience and not sustainability in particular as in sustainable development. However, systems concepts provide for a structure to imbibe aspects of sustainability. We propose a nested structure for organizing relevant research across the various scales of concerns that characterize sustainability. As understanding sustainability fundamentally requires understanding the interactions between natural and human systems, we discuss this in the context of the proposed structure and research into interactions.

Residents’ usages and behaviour are inadequately known and understood, as well as being highly variable. However, they play a determining role in the variability of both the energy consumption and environmental impact of residential buildings during their use-phase. This paper proposes a use-phase memory model for residential buildings, which stores energy and resource consumption, and usage patterns. Useful information is further extracted by data crossing and visual data representation. Building experts refer to it for two specific use-cases, namely designing a new sustainable building and renovating an existing one. This information helps them to understand energy and resource consumption and, real users’ behaviour and activities. Building’s users obtain different kinds of service in return for their collaboration and contribution. Our model is presently being deployed on a residential building, based on beneficial services for each building’s stakeholder, thus introducing a sustainable relationship between designers, the residential building and its users.

This paper presents an interdisciplinary method that allows engineers to map their view, that is usually focused on product parameters and characteristics, to the view of sustainability assessment experts, whose view is on a higher abstraction level and mainly focused on officially accepted sustainability indicators. The presented approach proposes to bridge the conceptual gap between the different views of both disciplines by focusing on a product’s life-cycle processes such as manufacturing, distribution and end-of-life processes. Details about these processes need to be provided by respective experts that thus must be included into the interdisciplinary design process. The presented method builds on the House of Quality method and uses the existing Sustainability Dashboard software tool for a visual comparison of different design alternatives.

Design of sustainable products is a critical process with enormous implications on the energy consumption and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. The impact on energy and emissions can be measured by an analysis of specific performance indicators at each stage of the product lifecycle. The analysis can provide useful insights to the design process. In this paper, Life Cycle Costs (LCC), Life Cycle Energy (LCE) and GHG emissions over the use phase of common appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, distribution transformers, street lights and irrigation pumps are examined. This study presents the current energy ratings and analyses the impact of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and low carbon material options on the overall energy and emissions at the individual unit and national aggregate levels.

Reliability analysis is one of the major concerns at the design stage since the occurrence of failures in engineering systems may lead to catastrophic consequences. Therefore, the expectation of higher reliability and lower environmental impact has become imperative. Hence the inverse reliability problem arises when one is seeking to determine the unknown design parameters such that prescribed reliability indices are attained. The inverse reliability problems with implicit response functions require the evaluation of the derivatives of the response functions with respect to the random variables. When these functions are implicit functions of the random variables, derivatives of these response functions are not readily available. Moreover in many engineering systems, due to unavailability of sufficient statistical information, some uncertain variables cannot be modelled as random variables. This paper presents a computationally efficient method to estimate the design parameters in the presence of mixed uncertain variables.

Environmental performance of a product could be increased throughout its life cycle by incorporating design requirements which consider Design for Disassembly (DfD) from a life cycle perspective by aiding ease of disassembly of the product across its life cycle. These design requirements, including DfD for different life cycle phases, should be made compatible with Design for Assembly (DfA) requirements within an integrated framework. Using such an integrated framework should reduce various layers of complexity introduced into design and should help designers to develop products that are easy to both assemble and disassemble, without compromising the product’s functionality. Prerequisites to developing the integrated framework are to: understand the requirements for DfD and DfA, identify if they are in conflict with one another, understand the underlying causes, and develop means to resolve these. To determine whether DfD and DfA requirements conflict one another, various existing products are analyzed, for conflicts among their assembly and disassembly processes. Various conflicts are found to be present among these processes. These conflicts are outlined, and possible causes for these are identified.

All the stakeholders in product life cycle needs to work together to achieve best possible sustainable solution. User perspectives need to be considered in design, for products to be sustainable in use. Literature review and empirical studies helped in identifying requirements to include user perspectives in design. An activity model is developed after thoroughly studying the usage of electric kettle. In this paper we propose a computer aided conceptual platform to visualize and interact with the product in virtual environment by the user for performing basic activities in use of that product. The platform also supports designer to create product and its usage scenarios based on requirements’ from users. It also captures and stores the data generated while user performs the activities virtually for assessment. This is achieved with the help of 3D stereo display, motion capture devices and visualization tool kits. A questionnaire is planned to obtain designer and user feedback on the platform to evaluate the support.

The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) consists of about two-fifths of the world population. This population can be categorized as poor with income of less than 2 dollars per day. It is important to alleviate poverty. One of the promising approaches to tackle the wicked problem of poverty is business development combined with poverty alleviation. In this approach, integrated solutions are necessary in order to address the diverse issues in the BoP. These integrated solutions are in the form of product service systems (PSS) rather than the conventional product-oriented or service-oriented solutions. In this paper, we explore different issues that need to be addressed in the PSS design at the BoP. We have also explored strategies used in this PSS design. We have used a case study to explain these issues and strategies. In addition, we have identified salient characteristics of the PSS design at the BoP.

E-Waste is considered as one of the most difficult wastes to manage, not only to reuse and recycle them, but also to detoxicate and make them harmless to the environment. This not only has an effect on the immediate environment, but a lot of valuable metals in E-Waste are getting wasted in landfills. Even recycling, reusing and extracting valuable metals from E-Waste requires special equipment and consumes a lot of energy, contradicting the very reason for effective management of resources. In this paper, the author has explored product re-assignment as a method to handle E-Waste, i.e. making products with E-Waste as the raw material. The author has narrowed his focus to Printed circuit boards (PCBs) for this study and developed methods to handle PCBs and make products using constructive design method. These highly finished, pre-treated and safe products were designed not only to put PCBs to use, but also such that they can be made with basic hand tools (like a drilling machine, hand saw, Pliers, etc.), minimum training and minimum production time; appropriate for cottage industries and to make new and easy livelihood from waste management. Although this paper proposes only products made of PCBs, it concludes with discussing on employing such re-assignment designs on other parts of E-Waste (not only PCBs) and in managing other types of waste.

The paper seeks to establish the influence of government policy on housing for the rural poor in India. First, literature on the self-help approach to housing over the last 50 years is summarized. Then the paper proceeds to present a comparison of the macro level view of the Indira AwasYojana for rural poor with an understanding of ground realities of rural housing acquired through ethnographic studies in five areas of rural India. The studies reveal how the rural poor live and how IAY-funded houses fall short of meeting their housing requirements. The paper argues that the main shortcoming of the IAY is its focus on housing as a product rather than a process involving peoples’ participation. It concludes that policies and schemes based on a limited understanding of housing processes are likely to meet with limited success and suggests ways in which architects and designers can contribute to housing in rural India.

Value chain concept and methods has assumed a dominant position in studying industry from management point of view. Decision supports methods using value chain require the acquisition of data from various existing corporate databases or data warehouses. In design research discipline, the subject of value chain design is emerging. Only a few of published research took a wide scope comparable to theories used today in engineering design. As an effort in developing the methodology and as a result of research within a national industrial consortium, this paper proposes and discusses a general value chain design approach which opens up a promising perspective to provide a new direction for research and application of value chain from scratch for multi-stakeholder industrial systems. It introduces value chain design as a way to determine, model, and analyze and evaluate the industrial ecosystems, in order to generate future scenarios and provide evaluation criteria for decision makers. To illustrate its application, the establishment of end of life vehicle recycling subsidiary at national level is explored to identify potential values stakeholders.

This paper describes a computer simulation based approach to investigating the longitudinal patterns in social emergence of design practice. Legitimation code theory is adopted as the underlying framework to develop the model. The design practices in this model emerge and evolve under the influence of the social structure as well as the knowledge structure. This model simulates a society of designers with different design backgrounds, affiliated to different teams and organizations. Design agents interact with each other and the concepts associated with the different disciplines. Design agents within each discipline are modeled to be attracted towards concepts, i.e., knowledge mode, as well towards the other design agents, i.e., knower mode, which collectively influence design practice. The force of attraction towards the knower or concepts varies across disciplines. The emergent social pattern is plotted in a two dimensional space defined by the social and knowledge axes. The simulation environment allows studying the longitudinal emergence of design trends resulting from varied initial conditions and what-if scenarios that are difficult to study in the real-world. Exemplary results are presented.

In collaborative engineering design research projects, the efficient and effective collaboration between the individual research groups is an important factor for the overall success of the project. However, different disciplines, research foci and personal backgrounds influence successful collaboration. The work presented in this paper focuses on the collaboration concerning models developed by individual subprojects and proposes a framework to support the necessary collaboration. Existing shortcomings are identified within a large scientific project in combination with an extensive literature review. The developed framework is based on two checklists in form of a model requirements document and model specification containing important aspects of models that need to be considered and communicated during the research project. Beyond the successful application for supporting collaboration in engineering design research projects, the insights and implications of this paper can be transferred to all other collaborative projects, where models are to be communicated between individuals or teams.

Sketch is the primary mode of concept exploration and development in the early stages of design. In a global product development scenario, collaboration in the early fluidic stages could minimize design conflicts and enhance design understanding. In this work, the potential modalities of interactions among the collaborating designers in early stages using 3D articulated sketch based concept models are proposed. Depending upon the spatio-temporal characteristics, issues related to the hardware, software and network infrastructure in four possible collaboration scenarios are identified. It is argued that the 3D sketching techniques, earlier developed for haptics-enabled, articulated, conceptual designs, can be extended to support design collaboration using evolving concept sketches. The attributes of the 3D sketches and the requirements of the different collaboration scenarios seem to have an implicit and synergistic relationship. Results of initial experiments using TCP/IP based view sharing and interaction on an articulated 3D concept-sketch for elemental collaboration exercises are also reported.

The number of challenges facing companies in their development activities is numerous, some coming from new markets and technologies, and some more abstract, like conflicts between short term efficiency and long term innovativeness. Improving collaboration between industry and academia is considered critical—the aim of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on long term learning collaboration between academia and industry, being a core competence area in itself. Another purpose is to form a platform for experience sharing, and increased integration capability for sustaining common knowledge—and practice development. The paper includes an analysis of several collaboration programs between academia and industry conducted in Sweden, resulting in conclusions and advises concerning what to consider for collaborative work.

The field of surgery is very much a technology-mediated practice. Unfortunately, locally appropriate medical equipment is largely unavailable, or in the case of Western donated devices, is non-functional in much of the developing world. This paper presents two critical challenges that face medical device manufacturers and designers looking to innovate in international surgery, and proposes a methodology to address these concerns. First, designers approach the process with a set of embedded assumptions and biases that are rooted in their experience of traditional markets, thus delimiting the solution space too narrowly. Second, designers working cross-culturally with expert users face numerous difficulties in understanding the problem space. Through a reflective process within both a Canadian and Ugandan context, this study proposes that the assumptions Western designers hold can be challenged to co-create and uncover innovative technology solutions in international surgery.

This paper presents a design case of a Rich Internet Application Co-Web: a collaborative work tool for pre-teens and teens to help collect, collaborate, organize and format information from the web for their school projects more holistically by enhancing their in-search and post-search experience. A user-centered design methodology was followed to help identify how teens and pre-teens use search engines and other technology tools in their daily life to collaboratively work on school projects and recognize the key real-world interactions, which help support this activity. This design solution proposes that integrating collaboration with family, friends and visualizing search keeps the user group interested and helps them retain and use the information they seek more cohesively within the existing search paradigms. This paper describes the design methodology, findings from co-design with participants and reflects on designing new web search interfaces that provide tools for collaborating.

Technical products and processes do not represent complex but complicated systems. Complexity gets implemented into such systems by including users and use cases. Hereby, technical systems can be interpreted as enablers, which fulfill functions for the user. We define the combination of users and enablers as a “system in application” and propose applying methods from structural complexity management for its modeling and analysis. Therefore, we introduce two structural characteristics and their interpretation. Based on modeling, analysis and interpretations we present procedures for system improvement and evaluation in terms of increased system usability. The practical application of the new approach on the check-in process for air travel shows achievable benefits from systematic improvement and evaluation strategies. Future work will cover the extension of applicable structure analyses and methods of multi-domain analyses.

It is common in the Management Science and Design Engineering communities to represent the processes contributing to innovation in companies as a funnel or similar variants. It is assumed it is possible to represent an analogy to the stages of planning and idea generation (the so-called fuzzy front-end), conception generation, as well as idea and concept selection to end up with the very few emerging developed and launched products and services on the market. First, this analogy may feature different innovation process layers, each of them independently as well as the entire set of these innovation process layers. After a review of literature on this funnel representation, we show that this analogy may be meaningful to globally represent and discuss about some properties of the innovation capability of a company at different locations: the R&D process as well as a given NPD process. We further describe a survey carried out within 28 large European technological companies through 48 detailed face-to-face interviews. Our questionnaire has allowed us to observe some characteristic patterns in the innovation funnels. We finally propose a model of five innovation funnels varying by their shape, permeability of emerging ideas and agility in terms of innovation management. We also hypothesize that these 5 funnels evolve in a sequential and cyclic way and that our cyclic model may be used as a questioning tool for the continuous improvement of the innovation management.

Lean concepts are routinely used in manufacturing but are still relatively new to New Product Development (NPD) process. If manufacturing can be modeled as flow of material, an analogous model for NPD process would be flow of information. This paper addresses the issue of eliminating wastes in new product development process by bringing lean concepts through an assessment system. The paper first defines wastes in the context of NPD process. A large number of waste drivers which add to wastes in any NPD process are identified. Similarly lean enablers and lean tools which if implemented can reduce wastes are also identified. A model connecting wastes and lean enables is arrived which gives a holistic picture of relationship to address and assess wastes in any NPD process. In order to measure the effectiveness of NPD process five lean performance measures are used which include design cost overrun, product cost overrun, schedule overrun, knowledge capture and customer satisfaction. Industrial inputs are used to arrive at assessment system proposed in this work and a further feedback from industry is used to enrich the assessment system after it is developed. Though the proposed system is developed for machine tool development process, it is generic in nature and can be used to assess any new product development activity.

Design of a gear that meets specified requirements is a challenging task. Competition from other power transmission components as well as increasing demands from industry such as increased power density, low noise etc., are forcing gear designers to design gears using novel methods (which are beyond the traditional standards based design methods). We, at Tata Consultancy Services, are developing a Platform for Realization of Engineered Materials and Products (PREMΛP), which helps a designer exploit the synergy between component design, material design and manufacturing. One of the key features of PREMΛP is its decision support capability, which we are demonstrating using design of spur gear as an example. The compromise Decision Support Problem (cDSP) construct is used to formulate the problem and the software DSIDES to solve it. Results obtained are well in agreement with existing knowledge of gear design. Ternary contour plots are created which show the compromise between various goals and associated standard deviation.

Continuous casting is a crucial step in the production of a variety of steel products. Its performance is measured in terms of productivity, yield, quality and production costs, which are conflicting. In this paper an integrated design framework has been developed based on metamodels and the compromise Decision Support Problem (cDSP) for determining a robust solution. Further, the design space for continuous casting has been explored to determine robust solutions for different requirements. Moreover, the utility of the framework has been illustrated for providing decision support when an existing configuration for continuous casting is unable to meet the requirements. This approach can be easily instantiated for other unit operations involved in steel manufacturing and then can be used to integrate the host of operations for the development of materials with specific properties and the combined design of products and materials. This enables an integrated simulation based design framework, PREMΛP, and will lead to a paradigm shift in the manufacturing industry.

The design of product-service systems (PSS) is a co-production process which involves the manufacturer, customer and suppliers as well as any other stakeholders. This multi-organizational, collaborative environment along with the unique tangible and intangible characteristics of PSS demands a novel computer-based design platform. To identify the requirements for modeling and simulating PSS, existing academic software for PSS, namely, Service CAD integrated with a life cycle simulator (ISCL), Service Explorer and the commercially available system modeling software OPCAT

TM

are analyzed using a truck provider PSS problem. These platforms are used to represent PSS, model the factors and simulate the system in order to appreciate and compare the impact of different PSS designs. The evaluation reveals the scope of these platforms and proposes overall requirements for modeling and simulating PSS.

Understanding information needs and managing organizational information resources are vital to face competitive globalized industrial environment. Support development to aid these processes is often failed in real-time environments due to lack of in-depth awareness about organizational interactions. In this paper a systematic approach to understand the information processes and information sources available in an aerospace organization was studied through a questionnaire survey. The analysis reveals that designers perceive that they get the right information at the right time in only 4 or more out of 10 for most of the times. Also they are unable to differentiate among the types of interactions they perform during their daily activities, due to which the information processes occurring within the interactions are not perceptible to them. This perception illustrates there is substantial need for the development of support to create awareness and satisfy the information needs of designers.

Competiveness of small and middle-sized enterprises (SME) correlates with recognizing customer needs and being able to efficiently react to it. At the same time, SME face a limitation of their resources. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the strength of product variety management (PVM) and its impact on the performance product development processes (PDP) in a multi-project environment. This paper aims at creating the means for SME to gain awareness of the interrelations of PVM and PDP. The latter are described using a dependency model, which has been derived from literature and empirical data gathered in case studies with six SME. The model serves as basis of a self-assessment-tool for SME to support the identification of the need to improve their PDP and the prioritization of improvement methods.

The value stream in product development (PD) is information flow. Therefore, the value of information needs to be increased, while waste of information needs to be eliminated in lean product development (LPD). Although the concepts value and waste in PD have both been the object of research activities, the dependency between them has been only addressed by a few authors. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the understanding of value and waste of information and their dependency in industrial practice. A web-based survey has been conducted in industry, which resulted in insight in industrial practice regarding definitions of value and waste, approaches to manage and assess value and waste, as well as companies’ reasons for and challenges in the implementation of LPD. Finally, the need for further research from an industrial perspective was revealed.

This paper describes two ways of mapping engineering processes in product development—Value Stream Mapping (VSM) and a simplified variant of VSM—which are compared with Process Mapping (PM). PM is closely related to VSM but applied differently although the goal—to identify possible process improvements—is often the same. The results of the study indicate that simplified ways of doing VSM are the most feasible. They are easier to get started with, they have a higher potential for improvement of the process and one gets an instant overview of the mapped process. Further, it is more likely that the improvement will be implemented when the users are committed through their involvement in the mapping process.

With the rapid commoditization of electronics, its content in the products are going up and this has resulted in shorter lifecycle of the systems and components. As the performance per dollar increases, speed of obsolescence of components is quicker. Most of the industries are adjusting to this rapid change to stay in business even though this puts lots of strain on their business. Changes can be replacement for obsolete parts, compaction, aesthetic changes etc. While this may be fine with industries like Consumer, Automotive etc. there are class of products and industries (also known as domains) which have a different set of requirements. Products in the Avionics and Medical domain not only have a very long life but also very tightly regulated by the bodies like Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This puts additional challenge of getting the product approved and certified whenever changes are made. This paper looks at the different challenges that product with long lifecycle encounter and how some of those issues are addressed. In many cases, impact of a small change can be very profound and unless a well designed process is in place. Otherwise addressing the life cycle challenges can be tricky. Added to this is the unique development processes used in Medical Devices and Avionics Devices development. In both these cases the uniqueness comes into effect due to the safety and reliability requirements of the products as they deal with patients and passengers. This paper deals with two types of challenges: (1) First one are the issues that designers need to address when they are designing the system so that they don’t have issues later due to long life (Preventive), (2) Challenges that need to addressed when product has lifecycle issues (Reactive).

Ideas are the life-blood of design. This paper presents a theoretical review of current trends in Idea Management (IM) within the front-end of New Product Development (NPD) literature. It identifies 28 success factors for managing and generating ideas within organizations and five emerging research themes. This is important to design as the Fuzzy Front-End (FFE) is one of the greatest opportunities for improving the overall innovation process [

1

]. Three idea management trends are discussed: (1) quantity versus quality: a shift from generating as many new ideas as possible to maximizing the number of good ideas (2) internal versus external practices: an increasing importance placed on implementing external ideas, and (3) ad-hoc versus systematic: companies are starting to apply a systematic approach to idea generation aligned with corporate design strategy. It will conclude by discussing future research opportunities in idea management and highlights the implications for design managers.

Experimental Design Technique (EDT) in combination with stage gate strategy is a powerful tool for providing critical information to designers during New Product Development (NPD) as well as product redesign activities. It systematically evaluates new product design strategy and facilitates redesign of existing products. The benefit of applying this technique to NPD is to speed up the development process by allowing product design team to make more informed decisions based on the generated experimental design data. The risk that designers face every time when they take decisions at every stage of NPD is high. Going with right decisions and refusing the wrong ones should be the driving force throughout product development process. To understand the decision making challenges of a designer, this paper illustrates go-no-go decisions in a sample of graduate students who attempted to design a “green stool” as part of their class assignment. Factors common to and factors exclusive to the various design stages are analyzed and described using EDT. Although this integrated “experimental design go-no-go approach” was not used initially by the design students, our analysis on the process is done post factor.

Design management has gained relevance among practitioners and researchers worldwide, and many have been the attempts to conceptualize it formally over last years. However, the role of design professionals acting in design management, as well as their interactions with other team members are seldom explored. This article examines the characteristics of design professionals in design management at both Brazilian and international levels. A literature systematic review was carried out in order to map these scenarios, highlighting different professional profiles according to their working environment and the organizational structure. Through this study, the various roles of design professionals involved in design management were identified, their personal profiles were examined, as well as the main differences arising from two different scenarios.

This study aims to highlight the role of Design Management in two metallurgical firms in Brazil. Considering the importance of combining theoretical concepts to the business reality, the methodological procedures were divided into two exploratory steps. In the first one, a literature review was performed by bibliometric analysis about the theme ‘Design Management’, mapping the international scientific production developed over the last 20 years. In the second step, two case studies were developed. The companies chosen belong to the metallurgical industry in Brazil, considered a traditional segment in the country that needs to understand design as a strategic tool. The bibliometric analysis results showed the evolution on the subject, as well as highlighted the multidisciplinary nature of design management, encouraging a pluralistic view. In the research inside companies it was possible to realize the importance of design teams’ integration with other areas that participate in the Design Management process.

The introduction of Lean Development (LD) requires change efforts within the organisation. People need to be convinced and motivated, development processes are questioned and adapted, eventually structures are changed. This paper compares the LD introduction processes within three SME with respect to three aspects: the top management involvement, the Lean leadership, and the employee involvement. Within those dimensions, main patterns are identified and interpreted to allow the derivation of implications for a successful introduction of LD.

Based on the EU-FP7, ActionPlanT project aims at assessing and ranking Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that will have the most impact on European competitiveness. One of the outcomes is a classification of ICT for design and manufacturing. ICT, used inside companies, can be classified in different levels according to company’s organization. The paper describes layered software architecture for design management and manufacturing execution of company which intensively uses ICT. The ICT classification can link two perspectives which are developed industrial strategy and used design and manufacturing technology. Results of this work were used in the FP7 project for integrating strategy with design and manufacturing levels.

We compared the methods of modelers who modeled in clay and those who modeled in CAD. We gave special attention to the size and shape characteristics of the model, and to the differences in approach between individual modelers. Four modelers made three different objects in clay and four other modelers made the same three objects in CAD. As a measure of success of the modeling method, we used the quality of the generated model, based on a set of criteria. Generally, the overall appearance of the clay models was better than that of the CAD models. Individual modelers applied different approaches for the same shape, not only when using clay, but also during CAD modeling. The quality of the models varied greatly. We conclude that the most appropriate modeling method depends on the size and shape character of the model, and also of the preferences and skills of the subjects.

The aim of the research work described in the paper is to enable designers to optimize the force feedback of a dishwasher door, in order to improve the user experience with the product at the moment of purchase. This is obtained by allowing the user to test the product since the beginning of the design process through the use of interactive Virtual Prototypes based on haptic technologies. A commercially available dishwasher is used as case study. The mechanical system producing the force feedback is modeled in a multi-domain simulation environment, and in parallel a parameterized simplified simulation is made available to the user through a force feedback haptic device. That feedback can be easily modified on user’s requests and the desired behavior can be sent back to the multi-domain simulation, which optimizes the system to behave in the desired way. How to correctly involve humans into the proposed design framework is also discussed, highlighting their key role in determining product characteristics.

The paper argues that the digital revolution in architectural design and manufacturing, particularly the new possibilities offered for the design and manufacture of complex geometry, calls for a re-examination of the traditional concept of the layer-based building envelope which serves only as a barrier. The paper presents a framework for developing building envelopes based on a complex cellular or sponge-like geometry and preliminary design experiments that examine various tectonic approaches to cellular envelopes. The new envelope types, inspired by both cellular/spongy envelopes in nature and monocoque structures in the aviation, automotive and naval industries, are based on simple materials that can be manipulated to generate a complex geometry. The complex geometry of the cellular grid and the cells is developed using parametric digital modeling.

Crash safety requirement without much penalty in structural weight of automotive structures has provided scope to fill hollow sections with foams. Different classes of foams are used for this purpose—polymer foams and metal foams. Metal foams are prepared out of light metals such as aluminum, magnesium, though occasionally steel foams are also suggested in the literature. This paper presents the results of crushing, bending and damping characteristics of steel extrusions with and without foam filling. Polymeric foam and aluminum foam are considered for this study. Based on the experimental study, the following observations are made: (a) The force verses displacement characteristics of aluminum foam filled tubes show large resistance (at higher loading rates) during axial crush; polymeric foam filling did not show such a marked improvement in energy absorption characteristics, (b) The bending resistance of aluminum foam filled sections shows an improvement in bending by 60–200 % during 3-point bend testing, and (c) Vibration levels are found to be reduced in lateral direction for foam filled sections. This foam filled section was tried on typical section of a two-wheeler component.

Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a new paradigm attempting to emulate the Open Source Software movement. While there are several flagship OSHW projects, this product development paradigm has yet to live up to its full potential. This paper reviews the current state of OSHW and reveals the lack of a robust and simple development platform as being a major barrier to the uptake of OSHW. The authors argue that an Open Source, Cloud-based platform would be the most viable direction.

Though Pupil Diameter (PD) of the human eye has been known to be an indicator of sleep-onset, the exact quantification of the PD were not known. In this study variations of PD which are in excess of +or−5% of the mean value were monitored and classified as Event A. In addition, the eye closure beyond −30 % of mean diameter were classified as Eye Blinks or Event B. The duration of eye blink was monitored if it is more than 1 s. Both Event A and Event B were used simultaneously to detect sleep-onset. The algorithm using OpenCV and MS VC++ was tested with IR videos PD of subjects on a driving simulator. The Alert subject exhibited several Event As but no Event Bs and the Drowsy subject exhibited both Event As and Event Bs and was successfully classified as “Drowsy” 2 times during the test run.

The major concern of past and present industry is to find how to make and supply the products for fulfilling customer needs with minimal cost and time. With this motivation, Renault recently decided, in order to improve efficiency and reduce costs, to re-design their distributed and heterogeneous thermal comfort simulation model’s activities in order to have a complete simulation environment. The purpose of this work is to represent the preliminary steps in achieving this goal in building a change process model which aid in V model requirement elicitation phase. So, in this work, we propose an extended V model based on Goal Oriented Requirement Engineering (GORE) for complex system’s requirement elicitation. Is the existing approach ineffective? What really are the research issues?

Design of structural members to overcome the failure due to shock loads is a challenging process. In this work, an effort is made to analytically predict the shock load due to hitting of the front chassis stopper on the rear chassis stopper during steering operation in an articulated earth moving equipment. The value of the shock load is obtained by equating the moment due to steering cylinders to the moment due to stopper hitting force. In order to verify the methodology, a prototype plate similar to the stopper was made and strain gauge rosette was pasted to it. Experimentation was done by applying the load to the prototype plate and the strain values are recorded for different load values in a laboratory set up condition. Strain gauging was also carried out by mounting the same prototype plate in the actual field machine. The value of shock load was obtained by calibrating the strain values obtained from the field against that of the laboratory experimental values. It is found that a very good correlation exists between the analytical and experimental values of the stopper load.

A significant problem for Indian farmers today is the difficulty of obtaining labor for farm operations. The most labor intensive operation is the post-harvest resource collection. A simple, economical, compact cable way system has been designed, developed and fabricated to haul sugarcane loads from the field. The cable way is made up of simple collapsible steel ‘A’ posts, which can be assembled on-site from ready-made frames. The sugarcane loads are slung on trolleys which move on a steel cable passing over the top of the frames, the cable being tightened with a chain pulley block. The trolleys are pulled along by a recirculating rope operated by a winch. The empty trolley is pulled along by the same rope along a cable way running near the bottom of the ‘A’ post. Several trolleys can move simultaneously along the cable way. With a 2 HP motor the trolley speed was noticed to be about 0.3 m/s and the overall performance of the prototype was satisfactory. The entire setup is fabricated from easy available and low cost components.

Birds gave humans the idea of flight. Detailed study of bird flight reveals the complexity of nature’s engineering. Birds are highly adaptive in flight. Blending man made technologies with nature’s natural engineering designs help in improving efficiency and operational flexibility of flying machines. In-flight alterations corresponding to flight characteristics are crucial for better operational efficiency and flexibility. The paper discusses the research and design methodology used to develop small Nature (Bio) Inspired Mission Adaptive Aero Structure models. Conventional aircraft frame and structures are re-engineered to seamlessly respond to instantaneous flight requirements and adapt suitably. The two primary objectives of this study are to design aircraft structures for

Time critical mission scenarios (military/counter terrorism/law and order)

Efficient and comfort flying (civil aviation/commercial aircrafts).

It is widely accepted that user-centred approaches to the development process produces better products and therefore brings commercial rewards. Despite such acceptance, the majority of manufacturers of medical devices fail to adopt such development principles. This paper will examine cases of manufacturers of bespoke medical devices, where one might perceive that the engagement with the end-user throughout the development process is critical to product quality. In a previous study undertaken by the author, interviews with manufacturers of bespoke medical devices indicated a perception that three external stakeholders to present barriers to the application of a user-centred design approach. This paper reports on a follow up study to understand the practice and agendas of the three external stakeholders, in order to draw a comparison with the manufacturers’ views. The findings revealed mismatch between the product development process that manufacturers of medical devices are encouraged to apply and the practicalities of complying with the needs of the identified stakeholders.

Movement of building façade cladding is used to control buildings’ exposure to environmental conditions such as direct sunlight, noise and wind. Until recently, technology and cost constraints allowed for limited instances of movement of facade cladding. One of the main restrictions had to do with the limitations that architects face in designing and controlling movement scenarios in which each façade or cladding element moves autonomously. The introduction of parametric design tools for architectural design, combined with advent of inexpensive sensor/actuator microcontrollers, made it possible to explore ways to overcome this limitation. The paper presents an ongoing research that examines the potential of autonomous movement of façade cladding elements. It defines types of autonomous movement strategies and compares the advantages of these strategies over those of traditional methods of centrally controlled movement. Finally, it presents and discusses several case studies systems in which autonomous movement for building cladding elements is implemented.

The use of hook hood lock auxiliary catch is vital to all automotive cars. This paper deals with the design, development and analysis of new hook hood lock auxiliary catch and design the press tool to reduce number of stages of operations to manufacture hook hood component. The study of existing hook hood lock auxiliary catch revealed that there was development of potential crack on hook side and to overcome this, new hook hood auxiliary catch was designed with embossed profile located on the center of hook side and bend leg side. Stress analysis was performed, results revealed that new hook hood design had no potential cracks and was able to with stand higher stress value of 7–17 MPa. In design of press one stage of operation was reduced. Misalignment in embossed profile was 200 microns and was reduced to 20 microns. Further press tool can be analyzed for nonlinear and fatigue analysis.

In the current scenario of increasing environmental problems and their global effects, there is a pertinent need to explore research in renewable energy technologies that do not affect the environment adversely, yet sustain the progress of mankind’s growth and development. This paper presents the work intended to address the aforementioned needs by designing cost-effective solar tracking units for improving the solar power generation. Literature review reveals that tracking the Sun in both East–West direction and North–South direction can improve the power output by 25–30 %. This improvement can particularly play a significant role in the scenario of large scale grid connected solar power generation. Within this frame work, the present study attempts to develop a solar tracking system that can enable the photovoltaic solar panels to effectively trap the available solar energy by tracking the Sun. The system is designed such that it can withstand the fluctuating wind loads, remain safe even in the most adverse weather conditions, and possess the quality of frugality, ease of maintenance and repair.

I propose to develop a project to simulate an abnormal bio-signal synthetically for analysis and testing of the device built for monitoring a person’s brain status. This system acquires and analyzes neural signals with the goal of creating a communication between the brain and GSM mobile. It is a low cost solution for an automated emergency response system and also provides constant patient monitoring without affecting their day to day activities. This system ensures safety as well as mobility at all times.

Schools of engineering in established universities such as Purdue offer courses in engineering design which, ‘… allows (students) to apply the fundamentals of engineering and science to solve open-ended design problems’ and to learn a structured problem-solving process in the broad context of product design, considering marketing, problem definition, conceptual design, design evaluation, detailed design, manufacturability, and economic feasibility. To anyone teaching in a design school, it sounds like industrial design taught in a school of design. If both the schools proclaim that they teach ‘design’, then what are they teaching? Where is the difference? Where do they overlap? Where are the commonalities? This paper sets about mapping the typical courses taught at schools of design and schools of engineering offering undergraduate degrees in industrial design and mechanical engineering respectively. Through this the author highlights the possibility of a hybrid programme, which may represent the real world nature of design in the built environment today.

ProViking® is a successful Swedish twelve-year research program in product development and production. Rather than to stimulate the emergence of new companies, it aims at strengthening the existing Swedish industry by producing scientific results at the highest international level and Ph.D.’s for work in the industry. ProViking® comprises a large number of research projects, jointly run by universities and industrial companies, and a national graduate school which provides courses for the Ph.D. students that work in the projects. The total ProViking® budget is close to 110 M€, of which 43 M€ is supplied by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the rest by the industrial project partners. Since the program started in 2002, forty-one different research projects have so far resulted in several hundred conferences and journal papers. Some fifteen patents have either been granted or have applications pending as a result of the research, and almost one hundred Ph.D.’s have graduated.

This paper will discuss the research, introduction, development and delivery of a recently established Masters of Arts suite of programmes. This ambitious Cross-disciplinary programme now comprises of 22 named Masters awards, taught in mixed disciplinary cohorts with multiple entry points. It draws students from across the world and represents a unique structural format within the UK Art and Design education sector. The paper will examine the experience of the delivery to the first cohorts and consider the strengths and weaknesses of the model suggesting recommendations for continuing improvement in the provision of highly flexible cross-disciplinary taught Masters provision.

Architects use language intensively along the design process. Students are often asked to talk about their concepts, which sets the verbal language as the main tool used by students for communicating information, in spite of the fact that the architectural act is conceived as visual/spatial. The study challenges the notion that language is inferior compared to visual representation, and places the verbal expression as an essential part of the design process. The study follows architecture students, whose verbal concepts during one semester were mapped in terms of consistency, variability and development. A correlation was found between the percentage of evolving concepts in the process and the final studio grade. Analyzing semantic networks of design processes showed a higher number of links between concepts for students with higher grades, supporting the argument that language has an important role alongside graphic products in the architectural studio.

Cross-disciplinary approaches are adopted in technical product development for a number of reasons, including the improvement of the product quality and the reduction of time to market. However, the positive and negative effects of cross-disciplinary approaches such as cross-disciplinary teams or biomimetics are controversially discussed. In this work, we perform a case study with architecture and mechanical engineering students using biomimetics to gain insights to effects in a threefold cross-disciplinary project. The results indicate possibilities for improving cross-disciplinary team projects.

This research-in-progress is an attempt to establish the need for a paradigm shift in design education. The research also investigates aspects that need to be rooted and nurtured in the foundations of design education appropriate in the 21st century India. ‘Design Foundation’ or ‘Basic Design’, as it was referred to in early design education has come a long way since its origins at Bauhaus and its further evolution at Ulm and Basel. In the nascent period of design, which primarily involved industrial design, the work was focused on physical products including textiles and graphics. Today, however, to be relevant to contemporary society, designers need to work on complex issues that are interdisciplinary and much broader in scope. 21st century design education needs to be able to apply design and develop strategies to solve real issues and not just look at ‘good form’. There is also visible shift from client-driven projects towards a more reflective ‘issue based’ design education that strives for more socially inclusive, locally/glocally/globally relevant solutions. It is becoming very important in design education to include political, social, economic and ecological discourses in a collaborative and trans/multidisciplinary way thus enabling a conceptual understanding of issues at stake as well as ‘intangibles’ like values, social responsibilities, empathy, humility and local/global relevance. Relevant design solutions seem to have shifted from ‘Form Based’ Design to ‘Issue Based’ Design. Design today is complex and large scale, and design education needs to address major issues. Design education needs to change, yet still retain its essential character. It needs to encourage trans-disciplinary thinking in students to better understand human beings and their needs, understand the economics underpinning issues and the technological requirements of solving problems. An extensively documented case study was conducted to illustrate collaborative learning in design education for students of a Foundation Program, using urban–rural connections as an example. The study documented collaborative activities among educators, students, crafts persons, professionals business entrepreneurs and so on, in constant search for ways to improve learning, increase student involvement and maximize human interaction, establishing the rural context in design education.

Several researches confirm that novice designers need to gain many abilities to perform like experts in the field. Design interpretation is a technique to analyze the working product and identify the functions performed by an artifact in the form of a function tree. This paper reports an investigation into the design of an Operating Table by novice designers and the use of Design Interpretation to gain abilities to perform like experts. The observations were made with respect to (1) Organized structure and cognitive action (2) Scoping and information gathering (3) Consideration of alternatives (4) Time spent on activities and tasks (5) gathering basic data (6) adaptive expertise and (7) procedural expertise. The results suggest that novice designers gain by carrying out design interpretation of the current generation when designing the next generation.

The recent advancements in networking technologies and tools are causing different transformations in the modes of communication and the design of products, which mostly is in direct relationship with the discipline of interactive media design. Having based its curriculum on project design courses for varying media, Department of Interactive Media Design in Yildiz Technical University was established in 1997 and gave its first graduates in the academic year of 2002/2003. Reflecting the effects of the spreading of media technologies in the way the students approach to design process and products, we believe that the graduation projects of the last decade have great potential to delve into the changes in the digital media landscapes. This research analyses this potential in parallel with the real-life design implementations in media technologies and a McLuhanian media theory, in terms of the dynamics of content flow and the reconfiguration of user relationship with the content.

This paper presents a case study in the design of a mobile based community healthcare communication system within a larger health project named ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activists). The paper outlines the process of conceptualizing and modelling a health system involving community healthcare workers in a rural setting in India. The aim of the designed system is to enhance the efficiency of the field level community health workers in carrying out their prescribed work. The methodology involved, the identification of needs and problems as well as the development of the mobile based approach is outlined in this paper. It includes the initial design of the system up to the GUI and final working prototype run on a mobile. System analysis and information design principles were incorporated during the development process. Results of a limited testing of the design are also reported in the paper. The study reported includes findings from 8 village community healthcare workers and 3 doctors using the developed application. The targeted users were asked to evaluate the designed interfaces and information architecture in terms of their learn ability, ease of use, efficiency and adaptability. It was found that using the application reduced the cognitive load of the healthcare workers and assisted them in their work. The community healthcare workers were able to engage better with the rural people using this application.

It is increasingly popular to teach creative thinking skills in schools. A diverse variety of programmes exist to support practitioners in this task, and some research has been gathered on the effectiveness of individual approaches. However, there is less research on the effect of such programmes in Indian schools and creative thinking. This study aimed to investigate the process of creative problem solving in children observes thinking strategies used by fifteen 11–13-year old children redesigning the traditional board game of Snakes and Ladders. There were three experimental conditions: individual, dyad and triad collaborative. The paper presents results where protocol analysis is used to investigate evolution of design ideas and various thinking strategies to analyze the levels of design thinking. The paper also examines the relationship between creative thinking and collaboration. Results demonstrated differences in levels of design thinking and performance gains for collaborative conditions both dyad and triad.

For both innovation and strategic design management education is shown via a case study how to teach through research in a multidisciplinary manner. Blurring boundaries of professional compartmentalisation and fragmentation of knowledge is leading towards a new era of innovation by not mimicking nature. In contrast to purely aesthetic design with its emphasis on subjective values, the focus of the innovation origination process here is on the rationalised formulation of functional shape in harmony with materials, production and environmental technologies. This is the opposite of prettifying or pure styling. It is also for this reason that there will be no dressing up of a predetermined technical package for the purpose of providing marketing or advertising with better sales or promotion arguments, but instead—and from the start—a concentration on the devising of analytic solution variants.

This paper investigates and discusses the opportunities and possibilities of mobile and ubiquitous technologies in the NPD process. During the 2012 EGPR—internationally based NPD process in virtual environment, we made an analysis on technologies and services that were used for the purposes of the course. Our particular interest was, what platforms the students used for different tasks of the NPD process, and are there any mobile alternatives. Since mobile technologies rely more and more on cloud services this opens many other issues as well: intellectual properties rights, protection of personal information, availability of services and information for different participants, standardization of the protocols which should be well considered before any engineering process such as NPD. Our first observations showed that on one side student participants use more and more of different mobile and cloud technologies available, but on the other side there are situations where they still feel much more comfortable when using “old-fashion” technologies, especially when communicating. One interesting fact is also constantly growing wish of students to use the IT web services which they are familiar with despite all necessary IT infrastructure for their work is provided by the course organizers. This is especially important message for the organizers of such courses, to learn how to balance between accepting the opportunities of new internet tools and threats of privacy and control over the intellectual property.

One of the main tools for translating customer’s psychological feelings and needs into product’s design domain is Kansei engineering (KE). It is important that analogy of Kansei engineering enters into the product development process on time and fulfills the role of complementary methodology which gives an emotional value to the product. This paper describes how Kansei engineering works, what are its subgenres and options of integration in following design processes. We will describe standard procedure of Kansei engineering type 1, design process VDI 2221 and Global product or services development process called “Design Golden loop” (DGL). The detail description—research on possibilities of integration of Kansei engineering type 1 framework into the design Golden loop process will be described.

The study examines the level of design and development in three multinational subsidiaries working on fluid power industry in Brazil. Some authors say that decentralization of R&D activities by MNCs is an important source of innovation for BRICS countries. Using a case study method this paper has found that the type of design and development activities performed by these companies are more related with redesign than original and innovative activities, which would demand more complex system approach. The answer for increasing innovation levels might be in domestic firms and not in multinational ones.

The paper aims at identifying the design principles of Indian folk painting by analyzing some paintings of master painters from Srikalahasti, Madhubani, and Raghurajpur. The authors further discuss the different initiatives to reinterpret the effectiveness of storytelling through graphic visuals among mass. The age-old

chitrakatha

tradition of narrative paintings with oration, as an intrinsic part of Hindu folk religion has played a significant role in the proliferation of the doctrines of Hindu epics and moral stories. The space division aims at an optimum clarity for impelling communication. The dimensions are often mandatory rather than arbitrary. Yet, often esthetic overpowers the theme. The authors as evaluators adopt the method of three folded analytical study of semiotic, iconic and thematic aspects. The tradition of narrative folk paintings although has emerged and grew in remote and isolated locations but is not confined to the temples and rituals anymore because of cross cultural exchanges. They are rich as artistic expression and potent enough to amalgamate and evolve with time. The paper, therefore briefly opines on the significance of folk art practice in the changing society.

Any Classification into categories aids in retrieving information. It develops a system for an object or phenomena. Hence, a classification of shop signs would provide an informed view about the system of elements that form the identity of a shop sign. The Philosophy of Classification as explained by Ereshefsky [

1

] brings to light three kinds of paradigms: Essentialism Sorts, Cluster Analysis and Historical classification. This study investigates the relevance of creating categories through cluster analysis. The analysis helps collate the pragmatic approach applied by the viewers of the shop signs. How people classify shop signboards mentally? What clues they use to attach qualities or concepts with a shop sign? Applying the method of Open Card Sorting [

2

] increased the analytical scope about the new values attached with the identities represented on these shop signs through text, images and materials. There is a paucity of published research in favour of the above statement. Therefore, this paper is a sincere attempt to substantiate the benefits of arriving at new categories via Open Card Sorting. This method provided the participants to design their own labels and classification structure for the given shop signs. A group of 30 participants (15 designers and rest 15 from other professions) underwent Open Card Sorting exercise. With formal instructions about card sort method, every participant was asked to ‘think aloud’ in order to resolve the 90 cards puzzle. Additionally, two standard questions regarding good and bad signs in the picture cards were asked. Around 20 new categories could be accumulated in the SPSS software. The viewers did not categorise total 10 cards of the 90 into any label(s). Cluster Analysis of this data gave rise to new classes/genres of these shop signs. It also clustered those cards that were considered good and bad shop signs. It is a unique study to know how people view, read and form opinions about shop signs. Results of this study can be used to inform the designers about the new features/qualities of the content and form observed by viewers along with their opinions on good and bad signs. Therefore, these insights would be the essential parameters in terms of elements of design and related qualities that sign designers should apply in the design of shop signs.

Integrated computational materials engineering (ICME), an integrated systems engineering approach is expected to (a) reduce the time and cost of discovery and development of materials and their manufacture, and (b) enable faster development of products assisted with richer material information. Development of a comprehensive IT platform that facilitates this through the integration of models, knowledge, and data for

designing both the material and the product

is a need of the day. In this paper, we introduce PREMΛP—Platform for Realization of Engineered Materials and Products conceptualized for this purpose. We also introduce two foundational problems that include (a) the development and production of steel mill products meeting stringent requirements of quality and cost and (b) the integrated design of gears and their manufacture, and how these are envisaged to be executed on PREMΛP. We envisage PREMΛP to be a platform for discovering new materials and concurrently designing materials, manufacturing processes and engineered components. The three associated papers in this series deal with application of the compromise Decision Support Problem construct for a manufacturing process design and component design problems, and perspectives on knowledge engineering application in the platform being proposed.

In this paper, we present the knowledge engineering aspects of an IT infrastructure for a Platform for Realization of Engineered Materials and Products (PREMΛP). PREMΛP enables harnessing available knowledge, learning emerging knowledge and continually creating new knowledge. It consists of an ontology-based, knowledge-assisted method and platform to capture, structure, configure and reuse knowledge for designing materials and engineering systems. The PREMΛP ontology provides extensible representation of data and knowledge. The semantic mappings of concepts in the ontology are used to draw inferences and provide pro-active guidance while designing manufacturing processes and selecting parameters to meet the product specification that addresses a given engineering problem. We show how the ontological models can help in (a) automating process design starting from a requirements statement to selecting a suitable design process and (b) creating a parameterized instance of the selected process. In the context of two engineering examples, namely, the simultaneous design of a gear and the steel from which it is to be made, we illustrate the salient features of knowledge driven design.

Open-X methodologies describe the application of Open Innovation to different stages of the Product-Life-Cycle (PLC). Open Innovation deals with involving external players in a company’s innovation process. Those can provide ideas from any stage of the PLC, such as lead users in the development stage or product-users in the utilization stage. These ideas themselves can initiate innovations in any PLC stage. However, this typically affects the development of new products. This means that ideas collected are incorporated into early PLC stages only. There is significant potential in using ideas not only for early stages but also for later stages, which means for existing products. Open-Utilization, as one form of the Open-X methodologies, can create innovations in the form of upgrades or new services for a product. Because respective PLC stages are not equally suitable for Open-X methodologies, this paper presents an assessment concept for evaluating each PLC stage regarding their Open-X capabilities and possible constraints. To illustrate the utility of the assessment concept, this paper identifies two PLC stages which demonstrate exemplary capacity for Open-X methodologies.

Creativity is considered the mental and social process of generating ideas, concepts, and associations. According to Bingalli (2007) concept generation is critical to the design process because it provides the designer with the necessary tools to picture the qualities of the desired design through the use of words or images. The paper discusses research done at University of Botswana, with 35 students from all years involved. Similar researches were done at several places in past (e.g. Brazil), but we were trying not only to establish students’ creativity level, but also to improve our learning environment and curriculum. The Paper addresses our intentions, research hypothesys, basic principles, methodology, preliminary and final results, and conclusions.

Tradition is the codified research over centuries—with tremendous feedback. It is important to realise that tradition is a result of research with feedback over the centuries, Joseph Allen Stein. For Indians the concept of globalization is not new. India has been trading partner to various nations since ages. What is new is the speed and the borderlessness of the transactions characterizing the present cache of globalization, made possible in large measure by the networking technologies, and in part by the object of such transactions, viz., information and knowledge, and the ensuing new economy. India being an old civilization with kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage, faith in the idea of growth and change remains the driving force of modern India. The material evidence of art crafts and architecture inevitably becomes the principal source for understanding the historical and cultural context. Our culture’s ability to sustain uniform and repetitive means of production and reproduction, and implicit in this uniform repeatability its high level of technical coordination. Design education needs to integrate these existing knowledge systems with the emerging knowledge economy, especially standing as we are at the threshold of forces of a globalization, and the opportunities that this could throw up for the traditional sectors. Design education has to redefine itself as the response to fast changing scenarios on the global front. Collaborative cultures form a invariable aspect of design studio. The interdisciplinary dialogues and debate nourish the atmosphere in the design studio. This paper intends to understand the ability of traditional societies of assimilation and reflection of various cultural and technological changes which result in the plurality of Indian architecture, culture and craft, which forms one of the major aspects of the global product development. Various examples from the different design fields like architecture and product design are taken for presenting the connect between the traditional wisdom and global product development..

Color is one the most important factors in the nature that can have some affects on human behavior. Many years ago, it was proven that using color in public place can have some affect on the users. Depend of the darkness and lightness; it can be vary from positive to negative. The research will mainly focus on the color and psychological influences and physical factors. The statement of problem in this research is what is impact of color usually applied to waiting area? The overall aim of the study is to explore the visual environment of hospitals and to manage the color psychological effect of the hospital users in the waiting area by creating a comfortable, pleasant and cozy environment for users while spend their time in waiting areas. The analysis concentrate on satisfaction and their interesting regarding applied color in two private hospital waiting area in Malaysia.

Styling of automotive products is a vital issue and it need to be imbibed with increased customer expectations during every stage of product design. In order to achieve effective styling, it is necessary to apply quality function deployment (QFD) approach which is an effective product and system development tool. This study presents a decision framework where analytic network process (ANP) integrated with QFD and zero–one goal programming (ZOGP) models are used in order to resolve the design requirements which are more efficient in achieving aesthetic design. The first phase of the QFD is the house of quality (HOQ) which transforms customer requirements into product design prerequisites. In this study, after determining the sustainable requirements named voice of the customers (VOCs) and Engineering metrics (EMs) of an automotive component, ANP has been employed to determine the importance levels in the HOQ considering the interrelationships among EMs and VOCs. Additionally ZOGP approach is used to take into account different goals of the problem. A case study was presented to exemplify the approach.

For children in India, the day of visit to a science center brings lot of fun and curiosity about the observed installations. But they visit this learning playground only once or twice a year. This kind of learning experience is missing in schools. In this project we attempted to bring the experience of science centers to schools. We propose “Kalpana”; an interactive dome based learning installation. It empowered students to visualize the phenomenon that sun changes its trajectory in the sky with change in location or time of the year. Students could interact with the physical model and corresponding changes were observed on dome supported with contextual audio feedback. This installation based teaching method was evaluated against conventional paper based and software based applications. It found to be significantly better and entertaining for students.

This article discusses the design of a jacket that will help the military personnel stationed at the extreme cold climatic conditions to prevent going into hypothermia, a medical condition where in the core body temperature drops below 35 °C (95 °F), which causes shivering, mental confusion and ultimately leads to death. Our aim is to develop an external heating system in the form of heating pads that will aid the body to avoid going into hypothermia state. The set of three heating pads are controlled through a programmable microcontroller and temperature sensors. The pads are allowed to get heated only within the set range i.e. 37–45 °C. All these components are finally embedded in a polar fleece jacket which is an ideal substitute for wool and is much lighter than its predecessor. An inner layer of styrofoam and copper sheet lining helps in further distribution of heat evenly to the rest of the body surface. Thus, a virtual environment (around 37 °C) is created around the human body and does not allow it to lose heat further. This reduces the hypothermic effect on the body by preventing the loss of heat from the body to the cold surroundings, and hence makes the individual feel much better in such harsh climatic conditions and prevents any adverse effects from happening.

When implementing a global product development approach, it becomes important to note that local aesthetic preferences and cultural semiotics can play a leading influence on brand preference and purchase behaviour. While much has been done to gain a broad understanding on culture and its impact on design, efforts to specifically map local certain aesthetic preferences has been limited. This paper seeks to create such a mapping for the Indian consumer. Armed with this understanding, global design efforts may gain empowerment to create appealing aesthetics that provide the right messages to Indian consumers. Thereby addressing issues related to local implementation, which is an important aspect of global product development. Moreover, this paper uses a mixed methods approach, (though rooted in strong established theory), which encourages the construction of new models to understand and map creative practice.

Approximately 1.5 million children die annually in India, before they attain 5 years in age. The deaths are mainly attributed to pneumonia and waterborne diseases like dysentery and cholera. Unavailability of clean drinking water is the root cause of the problem. Apart from sources of water being equally available to the masses, unavailability of extensive filtration systems, either at the point of distribution (POD) or at the point of use (POU), is a reason for consumption of impure water. An affordable water filter (POU) that can effectively kill all the disease causing pathogens will help in stemming the infant deaths. In India, earthenware pottery dates back to 1500 BC. Currently, potters are almost facing extinction because of changes in society. This paper, explores the possibility of using the skills of the Indian potter in making water filters out of earthenware with cheap filter substrate and provisions for germicidal UV based disinfection system powered through energy harvesting from transducers.

Extending the dictionary meaning of ‘capability’ as individual skills or abilities, the current paper adopts a Capability Approach (CA) based definition. Accordingly

capabilities

are effective (operational) options available to an individual to be and do as aspired, in leading a life of value upon reflection. This concept primarily evolved in development economics, and has remained confined to the Bottom/Base of the Pyramid, wherein the

capabilities

of the poor are envisaged to be leveraged upon in alleviating poverty. Design for the BoP aims at designing appropriate products to serve as means to realize or augment the

capabilities

of the poor. However, the designer’s role as an individual with

capabilities

is taken for granted. Here, the designers

capabilities

to design are the effective options/resources available for the designer to design effectively. The current paper extends the concept of CA to the designer, and evaluates the related

capabilities

for its impact on designing products aimed at the BOP to alleviate poverty.