The importance of inter- and transdisciplinary research for addressing today’s complex challenges has been increasingly recognised. This requires new forms of communication and interaction between researchers from different disciplines and nonacademic stakeholders. Demonstrators constitute a crucial communication tool in technology research and development and have the potential to leverage communication between different bodies of knowledge. However, there is little knowledge on how to design demonstrators. This research aims to understand how demonstrators from the fields Internet of Things and Robotics are designed to communicate technology. The goal is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of demonstrator practice with readily implemented design knowledge and to advance theoretical knowledge in the field of communicating artefacts. We thematically analysed 28 demonstrator design cases, which led to a typology that assists in categorising and understanding 13 key design principles. The typology is built from three perspectives: First, in terms of the overall goal communication, second, in terms of visitor engagement goals (attraction, initial engagement, deep engagement) and third, in terms of resource-related goals (low effort in development and operation). With this typology, we have taken a significant step towards understanding demonstrator design principles for effective technology communication between different stakeholders.

Archimedes, the founder of statics and hydrostatics, in his mathematics and physics studies, created methods related to his inventions of new machines, for example, the method of mechanical theorems based on his lever invention. He also used the principles of decomposition and replication underlying his heat ray invention, and these two principles permeate his work. Analysis of Archimedes’ work shows how he was perhaps the first to use methodically a strategy for solving diverse complex problems. In this article, we use the term Archimedes Code to encompass the way Archimedes approached problems including those two principles. Archimedes was perhaps the first design theorist and the first to think systematically about how to address design challenges. Furthermore, his work demonstrates the fundamental role of engineering practice in advancing science. The new insights regarding the Archimedes Code and its value in design practice may inspire both design researchers and practitioners.

The continuous integration and verification of components is essential in distributed design processes. Identifying the optimal integration and verification frequency, however, can be challenging due to the complexity of product development. Especially the effect of human decision-making in partially isolated development scenarios is difficult to consider. Thus, we performed an experimental study based on the following three steps: first, an extension of the existing parameter design framework, which is used to conduct experiments under laboratory conditions, in which human subjects solve quantitative surrogate design tasks. Second, a series of experiments in which 32 subjects divided into groups of two solved 229 parameter design tasks with a varying integration and verification frequency. And, third, a statistical analysis of the results with respect to development time, coupling strength and process costs. According to our results, development time can be reduced by up to 71%, if the integration and verification frequency is doubled. If process costs are also considered, the optimal frequency can be subject to a conflict of goals between reducing development time and minimising process cost.

Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.

This paper critically reviews literature about design framing to clarify an understanding of what is meant by the construct of a design frame. It describes the origins of the term design frame and characterises three distinct definitions that can be found within the literature. It reviews empirical studies of design framing to highlight definitional confusion between studies. It discusses the significance of Dorst’s propositional model of design frames and juxtaposes design frames with other related constructs. It clarifies ways that the resolution of nomenclature for describing design framing might lead to a more coherent body of empirical research into this topic. It suggests that there is value in developing a better cognitive model of design framing and outlines potential steps towards such a model.

Method development is at the heart of design research as methods are a formalised way to express knowledge about how aspects of design could or should be done. However, assuring that methods are in fact used in industry has remained a challenge. Industry will only use methods that they can understand and that they feel will give them benefit reliably. To understand the challenges involved in adopting a method, the method needs to be seen in context: it does not exist in isolation but forms a part of an ecosystem of methods for tackling related design problems. A method depends on the knowledge and skills of the practitioners using it: while a description of a method is an artefact that is a formalisation of engineering knowledge, a method in use constitutes a socio-technical system depending on the interaction of human participants with each other as well as with the description of the method, representations of design information and, often, tools for carrying out the method’s tasks. This paper argues that crucial factors in the adoption of methods include how well they are described and how convincingly they are evaluated. The description of a method should cover its core idea, the representations in which design information is described, the procedure to be followed, its intended use, and the tools it uses. The account of a method’s intended use should cover its purpose, the situations or product types within its scope, its coverage of kinds of problems within its scope, its expected benefit and conditions for its use. The different elements need to be evaluated separately as well as the method as an integrated whole. While verification and validation are important for some elements of methods, it is rarely possible to prove the validity of a method. Rather the developers of methods need to gather sufficient evidence that a method will work within a clearly articulated scope. Most design methods do not have binary success criteria, and their usefulness in practice depends as much on simplicity and usability as on the outcomes they produce. Evaluation should focus on how well they work, and how they can be customised and improved.

In recent years, ‘living lab (LL)’, a design approach that actively involves users as partners from the early stage of the design process, has been attracting much attention. Compared with the traditional participatory design or co-design approaches, one of the distinctive features of the LL approach is that the process of and opportunity for user participation tends to be long-term and complex. Thus, LL practitioners must appropriately plan and design effective integration of user participation into the design process to promote co-creation with users. In other words, LL practitioners are required to ‘configure user participation’ for the effective promotion of co-creation. However, to date, the knowledge on how to properly configure long-term and complex user participation in LLs has not been systematically clarified, nor have its methodologies been developed. This study develops a novel framework for configuring user participation in LLs. Through a literature review and analysis on LL case studies, we identified the 11 key elements in five categories that should be considered while configuring user participation in LLs. Furthermore, on the basis of the identified elements, we developed a novel framework for configuring user participation in LLs, which is called the participation blueprint. We have demonstrated its use and have also discussed its theoretical and practical contributions to the LL and co-design research community.

Complexity in product design increases with little understanding of cause and effect. As a consequence, the impact of design decisions (or changes) on the product is difficult to predict and control. This article presents a model of cause and effect for design decisions that avoid circular dependencies: the so-called attribute dependency graph (ADG) models complex system behaviour and properties, and increases transparency by carefully distinguishing between what is realised and what is required. An ADG is a polyhierarchy, with design variables (directly controllable) at the bottom, quantities of interest (not directly controllable) on the top, and intermediate attributes. The dependencies represent causality in a simple sense: assigning values to design variables, representing the cause, will determine the values of the dependent attributes, representing the effect. ADGs do not account for what is required, but for what effects emerge by design activity. A set of rules makes them independent of designers’ views. They provide the structure for so-called INUS conditions, that is, insufficient but necessary parts of unnecessary but sufficient conditions that can be used for requirement development. The modelling approach is applied to one simple synthetic and then to two real-world design problems, the design of a water hose box and a passenger vehicle.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are very quiet at low speed, which can be hazardous for pedestrians, especially visually impaired people. It is now mandatory (since mid-2019 in Europe) to add external warning sounds, but poor sound design can lead to noise pollution, and consequently annoyance. Moreover, it is possible that EVs are not sufficiently detectable in urban areas because of the masking effect from the background noise. In this paper, we propose a method for the design of warning sounds that takes into account both detectability and unpleasantness. The method implements a multiobjective interactive genetic algorithm (IGA) for the optimisation of the characteristics of synthesised sounds. An experiment is proposed to a first panel of participants in order to define a set of Pareto efficient sounds. At the individual level, sounds obtained with the IGA are compared to different sound design proposals. Results show that the quality of the sounds designed by the IGA method is comparable to those provided by a sound designer. From the sounds of the Pareto set, a design recommendation method based on the probability distributions of the sounds’ characteristics is proposed. An external validation with a second panel of participants shows that these recommended sounds constitute relevant trade-offs when compared to other design proposals.

This paper presents the process considerations contained within the first ever framework for implementing Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) within high-value Engineering-to-Order (ETO) programmes. The scientific contribution of the research is the identification of the process-oriented factors that are instrumental in the successful implementation of PLM within an ETO context. The framework has been developed using a qualitative methodology based on the thematic analysis of 27 semi-structured interviews. The participants were senior personnel from 11 ETO organisations in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, the United States and Canada. The thematic analysis resulted in framework themes described in relation to the process objectives, challenges or enablers, and the contributing elements of the themes were then synthesised to illustrate their interconnectedness in supporting PLM implementation. Validation of the framework using 19 participants selected from seven ETO organisations resulted in 95% agreement with statements that assessed the quality, structure and versatility of the framework. This research contributed to the updated BAE Systems Maritime Naval Ships PLM strategy for the design, build and in-service support for the First of Class new generation Royal Navy vessel for a recent shipbuilding programme.

Taking the perspective of users and stakeholders can help designers incorporate human-centricity in their practice. However, we know relatively little of the dynamics of perspective taking – a cognitive facet of empathy – in design processes as a situated cognitive and behavioural activity, rather than as an overall orientation. To illuminate how perspective taking is used in design, we carried out a longitudinal multiple case study of 49-month-long graduate-level product and service design projects, exploring differences between high and midscale performance in different design phases. Through thematic analysis of review session discussions, we find that perspective taking in high-performing sessions involves three aggregate dimensions: gathering data to form perspectives, scoping and making sense of perspectives and using perspectives in creative processing. We identify phase-dependent characteristics for the scope and emphasis of perspective taking in concept development, system design and detailed design. We also describe different ways in which novice teams struggled to create and apply user perspectives. As a result, the current study sheds light on perspective taking and the changing nature of effective perspective taking across the design process.

In recent years, co-creation and collaboration platforms to create and deliver new products and services have taken a step forward; this has led to the development of a new active involvement of users, who from co-designers have become independent designers, even if not experts. Co-design is dynamic and provides the tools to generate democratic design processes guided by the users themselves. The democratization of design tools is the premise for a new paradigm defined ‘Diffuse Design’ by Manzini (2015). This contribution explores the approaches of open design and open production with particular attention to the field of visual communication and the production of motion design artifacts. After an introduction to the co-design framework, the main open-production visual communication platforms are presented to offer an overview of the topic. Next, the potential of online platforms to enable non-designers to produce animated artifacts is explored by examining student projects in a motion design University course. The most significant outputs of the student experience are then described and critically analyzed. Finally, the conclusions investigate the different perspectives for reading the democratization of tools for creating visual artifacts and lay the foundations for future lines of research.

Idea selection is crucial in design as it impacts the outcome of a project. A collaborative design activity could be considered as a social process where the interactions and individual states (such as the importance in the team and self-efficacy level) could affect decision-making. It is often seen in design teams that some individuals, referred to as ‘influencers’ in the article have more capacity to influence than others, hence they govern the team process for better or worse. Due to the limited work done in the past to study the effect of these influencers on design outcomes, the work aims at increasing the understanding by presenting some insights from its agent-based simulation. The simulation results show how different influencer team compositions affect design outcomes in terms of quality and exploration of the solutions. The idea selection starts with the agents who are ready with their solution in their ‘mind’. The work presented in this article describes a framework for simulating decision-making during idea selection by considering the influencer and majority effect. The empirical study presented in the article verifies the model logic, that is, the presence of influencer and the majority during idea selection and supports the assumption that individuals’ agreement on solutions proposed by other team members depends on the degree of influence and past agreement. The results of the simulation show that teams with well-defined influencers produced solutions with higher variety and had more uniform contributions from team members, but also produced solutions of lower quality.

We review the scholarly contributions that utilise natural language processing (NLP) techniques to support the design process. Using a heuristic approach, we gathered 223 articles that are published in 32 journals within the period 1991–present. We present state-of-the-art NLP in-and-for design research by reviewing these articles according to the type of natural language text sources: internal reports, design concepts, discourse transcripts, technical publications, consumer opinions and others. Upon summarising and identifying the gaps in these contributions, we utilise an existing design innovation framework to identify the applications that are currently being supported by NLP. We then propose a few methodological and theoretical directions for future NLP in-and-for design research.

Empathy is argued to be a key factor for a successful design discussion. However, such causality cannot be empirically proven based on how empathy is currently defined in design community. Empathy is used as an umbrella construct, broad and encompassing of diverse phenomena, making it difficult to quantify. We suggest improving such a situation by introducing a definition of empathy based on psychology literature, which provides structure and guidance for studying the role of empathy in design. We first break empathy to components. Then, we review empathy as used in design. Finally, we synthetize the reviewed material. From this synthesis, we conclude that empathy in design shares several key components of empathy in psychology; particularly with state influences, top-down control process and emotional stimuli. These are present in design methods although they have not been studied using such terms. Incorporating psychological components of empathy into design can help conceptualising empathy from a different angle, thus opening interesting new avenues for future research. We hope that our treatment provides present and future designers with some useful guidance.

Customers make quick judgments when shopping online based on how they perceive product design features. These features can be visual such as material or can be descriptive like a ‘nice gift’. Relying on feature perceptions can save customers time but can also mislead them to make uninformed purchase decisions, for example, related to sustainability. In a previous study, we developed a method to extract product design features perceived as sustainable from Amazon reviews, identifying that customer perceptions of product sustainability may differ from engineered sustainability. We previously crowdsourced annotations of French press reviews and used a natural language processing algorithm to extract the features. While these features may not contribute to engineered sustainability, customers identify the features as sustainable enabling them to make informed purchase decisions. In this study, we validate how our previously developed method can be generalised by testing it with electric scooters and baby glass bottles. Features perceived as sustainable for both products are extracted and second, participants are tested on interpreting the features using a novel collage approach. Participants placed products on a set of two axes and selected features from a list. Our results confirm that the proposed method is effective for identifying features perceived as sustainable, and that it can generalise for different products with limitations. Positively biased Amazon reviews can limit the natural language processing performance. We recommend that designers use our method when designing products to capture feature perceptions and help inform customer-oriented design decisions.

Enterprise social network messaging sites are becoming increasingly popular for team communication in engineering and product design. These digital communication platforms capture detailed messages between members of the design team and are an appealing data set for researchers who seek to better understand communication in design. This exploratory study investigates whether we can use enterprise social network messages to model communication patterns throughout the product design process. We apply short text topic modelling (STTM) to a data set comprising 250,000 messages sent by 32 teams enrolled in a 3-month intensive product design course. Many researchers describe the engineering design process as a series of convergent and divergent thinking stages, such as the popular double diamond model, and we use this theory as a case study in this work. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of STTM results reveals several trends, such as it is indeed possible to see evidence of cyclical convergence and divergence of topics in team communication; within the convergence–divergence pattern, strong teams have fewer topics in their topic models than weaker teams; and teams show characteristics of product, project, course, and other themes within each topic. We provide evidence that the analysis of enterprise social networking messages, with advanced topic modelling techniques, can uncover insights into design processes and can identify the communication patterns of successful teams.

Historically, squeak and rattle (S&R) sounds have been among the top quality problems and a major contributor to the warranty costs in passenger cars. Geometric variation is among the main causes of S&R. Though, geometric variation analysis and robust design techniques have been passively involved in the open-loop design activities in the predesign-freeze phases of car development. Despite the successful application of topometry optimisation to enhance attributes such as weight, durability, noise and vibration and crashworthiness in passenger cars, the implementation of closed-loop structural optimisation in the robust design context to reduce the risk for S&R has been limited. In this respect, the main obstacles have been the demanding computational resources and the absence of quantified S&R risk evaluation methods. In this work, a topometry optimisation approach is proposed to involve the geometric variation analysis in an attribute balancing problem together with the dynamic response of the system. The proposed method was used to identify the potential areas of a door component that needed structural reinforcement. The main objective was to enhance the design robustness to minimise the risk for S&R by improving the system response to static geometrical uncertainties and dynamic excitation.

Effective stakeholder interviewing is a critical component of a design process. However, interviewing is a complex skill that is difficult for novice designers to learn and incorporate into their design practices. Few studies have investigated how novice designers apply recommended practices for interviewing stakeholders during the development of product requirements. In this research, we studied how novice designers elicited information to inform the development of product requirements during stakeholder interviews. Results included the establishment of a coding methodology developed from a systematic literature review of recommended interviewing practices that was used to reliably evaluate the use of recommended practices in novice designers’ interviews. A correlation existed between the use of recommended practices and the extent to which information gathered from interviews was incorporated into the requirements. Additionally, specific recommended practices, such as encouraging deep thinking and being flexible and opportunistic, differentiated performance among novice designers. The coding methodology could be adapted to guide the development of stakeholder interview protocols and assessment of design interview skills.

Sustainability encompasses social, economic and environmental issues with the primary aim to fulfil the needs of the present society without compromising the potential needs of future generations. Product design has been identified to greatly influence the sustainability of New Product Development. This study aims to identify and review the fundamental factors in which product design has the ability to influence and improve the overall environmental sustainability of a product. A comprehensive literature review has been performed to establish trends over the past four decades. The factors that have significant potential, such as the 6Rs, waste and energy, which aid designers in the implementation of environmental sustainability during the product design process have been identified and discussed. Through this analysis, a new conceptual framework has been conceived, facilitating designers in implementing environmental sustainability during product development. In addition, future research opportunities have been identified.