Design fixation refers to blind adherence to a set of ideas, which can limit the output of conceptual design. Engineering designers tend to fixate on features of pre-existing solutions and consequently generate designs with similar features. The objective of this study is to leverage functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brain activity of engineering designers during conceptual design in order to understand whether/where design fixation can be detected in a person’s brain when solving design problems. Design solutions indicated that fixation effects were detectable at a statistically significant level. fMRI results show increased activation in areas associated with visuospatial processing when comparing ideation activities using an Example solution to No Example solution. Activation was found in the right inferior temporal gyrus, left middle occipital gyrus, and right superior parietal lobule regions. The left lingual and superior frontal gyri were found to be less active in the example condition; these gyri are close in proximity to the prefrontal cortex, associated with creative output. The spatial patterns of activation provide evidence that a shift in mental resources can occur when a designer becomes fixated. For designers, the timing of ideation relative to the timing of benchmarking existing solutions should be considered.

Human-centered design provides a means to help designers create products or systems with ‘people’ as the focus. Compassionate Design (CD), introduced in this paper, is an approach that addresses niche sensitive needs and involves a way of thinking where designers pay special attention to the users’ sense of dignity, empowerment, and security. These niche needs surfaced as a result of analyses of 12 cases situated in sensitive contexts where the users felt vulnerable, had a high level of emotional engagement and were negatively affected by the situation. The designers described their deep concern for the users in various talks and interviews. This paper explains the conception of CD and its development that resulted from iteratively and qualitatively analyzing these cases in which designers were intuitively focusing on niche user needs. Dignity, empowerment and security form the basis of CD and have been contextualized in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs after they emerged as a result of the analysis of data. This research sets the platform for a design approach that can help designers to consider the often unarticulated user needs of dignity, empowerment and security, in a more intentional manner and not be left to chance.

Combining additive manufacturing (AM) with carbon fiber reinforced polymer patched composites unlocks potentials in the design of individualized, lightweight biomedical structures. Arising design opportunities are geometrical individualization of structures using the design freedom of AM and the patient-individual design of the load-bearing components employing carbon fiber patch placement. To date, however, full exploitation of these opportunities is a complex recurring task, which requires a high amount of knowledge and engineering effort for design, optimization, and manufacturing. The goal of this study is to make this complexity manageable by introducing a suitable manufacturing strategy for individualized lightweight structures and by developing a digitized end-to-end design process chain, which provides a high degree of task automation. The approach to achieve full individualization uses a parametric model of the structure which is adapted to patients’ 3D scans. Moreover, patient data is used to define individual load cases and perform structural optimization. The potentials of the approach are demonstrated on an exoskeleton hip structure. A significant reduction of weight compared to a standard design suggests that the design and manufacturing chain is promising for the realization of individualized high-performance structures.

An important source for technical lightweight design is the human musculoskeletal system. The musculoskeletal lightweight design mainly results from the coordinated interplay of different principles. Prevailing solutions that use musculoskeletal lightweight design principles neglect the coordinated interplay of these principles. Moreover, transfer is limited to isolated principles. Therefore, further potential for lightweight design can be expected. Due to the kinematic similarities of the human extremities to technical systems that can be described as open kinematic chains, in this paper the lightweight design potential is examined by applying the interaction of the aforementioned lightweight design principles to technical systems. A new bioinspired approach is developed, which implements the control and optimization running synchronously in nature in a sequential approach for technology. The bioinspired approach is implemented by coupling multibody simulation and topology optimization in an iterative process. The results of the bioinspired approach show that, compared to a classical approach, mass can be saved and deformations can be minimized. The synthesized geometry is mainly optimized for compressive stresses and therefore easier to manufacture than a bending stiff structure in the classical case. The examinations in this paper do not take application-specific requirements into account. Therefore the application to special technical systems, and furthermore advantages and disadvantages of the new approach are discussed.

Value models are increasingly discussed today as a means to frontload conceptual design activities in engineering design, with the final goal of reducing cost and rework associated with sub-optimal decisions made from a system perspective. However, there is no shared agreement in the research community about what a value model exactly is, how many types of value models are there, their input–output relationships and their usage along the engineering design process timeline. Emerging from five case studies conducted in the aerospace and in the construction equipment industry, this paper describes how to tailor the development of value models in the engineering design process. The initial descriptive study findings are summarized in the form of seven lessons learned that shall be taken into account when designing value models for design decision support. From these lessons, the paper proposes a six-step framework that considers the need to update the nature and definition of value models as far as new information becomes available, moving from initial estimations based on expert judgment to detailed quantitative analysis.

Modular design allows to reduce costs based on scaling effects. However, due to strong alternating effects between the resulting modules and products, methods and tools are required that enable engineers to use specific views in which the respective information can be linked and retrieved according to the situation. Within the scope of this paper, the model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach is used to model the complex real-world problem of vehicle modular kits. The aim is to investigate the potentials in this context, how modular kits and products can be efficiently modeled and finally how MBSE can support modular design. In order to investigate this in detail, two extensive studies are carried out in a company over a period of three years. The studies show that modular kits lead to an increased complexity of development. Across industries and companies, the demand for reference product models is shown, which facilitate the unification of inhomogeneous partial models and serve as a knowledge repository for the development of future product generations. On this basis, a framework is derived which enables the reuse of large proportions of the product models of previous product generations. This framework is evaluated on the basis of five case studies.

This paper presents a novel manufacturing technique for complex-shaped, hybrid metal composite structures leveraging the design freedom of additive manufacturing (AM). The key novelty of this research is an approach for an autoclave-suitable and removable tooling, which consists of a 3D-printed functional shell and a structural filler material. In this process, a layup shell is produced with AM and filled with a temperature-resistant curing support to form a removable inner tooling. The functional shell has integrated design features for the positioning and the fixation of metallic interface elements and is removed after curing through integrated breaking lines. The feasibility of this manufacturing technique is demonstrated by fabricating a novel lightweight structure for the hydraulic quadruped (HyQ) robot. Selective laser sintering (SLS) was used to produce the functional shell tooling. Titanium interface elements made via selective laser melting (SLM) were assembled to the shell and co-cured to carbon fiber using an autoclave prepreg process. The resulting multi-material structure was tested in ultimate strength and successfully operated on the HyQ robot. Weight savings of 55% compared to a reference design and the mechanical viability of the multi-material structure indicate that the proposed manufacturing technique is appropriate for individualized hybrid composite structures with complex geometries.

In multi-domain product development organizations, there is a continuous need to transfer captured knowledge between engineers to enable better design decisions in the future. The objective of this paper is to evaluate how engineering knowledge can be captured, disseminated and (re)used by applying a knowledge reuse tool entitled Engineering Checksheet (ECS). The tool was introduced in 2012 and this evaluation has been performed over the 2017–2018 period. This case study focused on codified knowledge in incremental product development with a high reuse potential both in and over time. The evaluation draws conclusions from the perspectives of the knowledge workers (the engineers), knowledge owners and knowledge managers. The study concludes that the ECS has been found to be valuable in enabling a timely understanding of technological concepts related to low level engineering tasks in the product development process. Hence, this enables knowledge flow and, in particular, reuse among inexperienced engineers, as well as providing quick and accurate quality control for experienced engineers. The findings regarding knowledge ownership and management relate to the need for clearly defining a knowledge owner structure in which communities of practice take responsibility for empowering engineers to use ECS and as knowledge evolves managing updates to the ECS.

Lightweight design demands and complexity requirements of modern high-end structures in aerospace, automotive, sports and bioengineering can be successfully covered by a combination of fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) with metallic components. Conventionally, mechanical locking is favored in integrating multi-material parts, avoiding bonded interfaces. The feasibility of a multi-material carbon FRP–aluminum structural component of a robotic exoskeleton, fabricated in a single step with the FRP directly cured on the aluminum domain, was investigated. To conduct the feasibility analysis, pertinent systematic FE modeling involving cohesive contact was employed to optimize the design, while strength and fracture testing were conducted to define the formed interfaces’ resistance. Sandblasting treatment was also investigated and compared with plain surfaces. The results show that the effect of residual stresses due to curing process governs the created joint’s durability. To reduce their effect, the local compliance of the multi-material components was altered by introducing a compliant layer along with modification of the aluminum domains’ local geometry in a manner that does not compromise the overall structural integrity. The interface stresses of the optimized geometry are a few times lower than the ones estimated for the initial design. The methodology adopted herein delivers some guidelines on treating such problems.

The performance of a design team is influenced by each team member’s unique cognitive style – i.e., their preferred manner of managing structure as they solve problems, make decisions, and seek to bring about change. Cognitive style plays an important role in how teams of engineers design and collaborate, but the interactions of cognitive style with team organization and processes have not been well studied. The limitations of small-scale behavioral experiments have led researchers to develop computational models for simulating teamwork; however, none have modeled the effects of individuals’ cognitive styles. This paper presents the Kirton Adaption–Innovation Inventory agent-based organizational optimization model (KABOOM), the first agent-based model of teamwork to incorporate cognitive style. In KABOOM, heterogeneous agents imitate the diverse problem-solving styles described by the Kirton Adaption-Innovation construct, which places each individual somewhere along the spectrum of cognitive style preference. Using the model, we investigate the interacting effects of a team’s communication patterns, specialization, and cognitive style composition on design performance. By simulating cognitive style in the context of team problem solving, KABOOM lays the groundwork for the development of team simulations that reflect humans’ diverse problem-solving styles.

Consumers’ choice of services and the product platforms that deliver them, such as apps and mobile devices, or eBooks and eReaders, are becoming inextricably interrelated. Market viability demands that product–service combinations be compatible across multiple producers and service channels, and that the producers’ profitability must include both service and product design. Some services may be delivered contractually or physically, through a wider range of products than others. Thus, optimization of producers’ contingent products, services, and channel decisions becomes a combined decision problem. This article examines three common product–service design scenarios: exclusive, non-exclusive asymmetric, and non-exclusive symmetric. An enterprise-wide decision framework has been proposed to optimize integrated services and products for each scenario. Optimization results provide guidelines for strategies that are mutually profitable for partner–competitor firms. The article examines an example of an eBook service and tablet, with market-level information from four firms (Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google) and conjoint-based product–service choice data to illustrate the proposed framework using a scalable sequential optimization algorithm. The results suggest that firms in market equilibrium can markedly differ in the services they seek to provide via other firms’ products and demonstrate the interrelationship among marketing, services, and product design.

Perceived quality refers to customers’ cognitive and emotional responses to a particular design, often also associated with craftsmanship and customer satisfaction. Previous research defined a taxonomy of perceived quality and provided understanding about how engineering design decisions impact customer satisfaction. Furthermore, development of new products is frequently based on carrying over attributes of existing products, either from the same producer or from competitors. Previous research offered a new product development methodology combining variations of subsystems to carry over from existing products. This brief presents how these two lines of research combined to design the central console of the Porsche Panamera automobile and discusses the opportunities and challenges posed in the practical implementation of this research.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman presented a model of human cognition based on two modes or ‘systems’ of thinking: system 1 thinking that is fast and intuitive and system 2 thinking that is slow and tedious. This paper proposes a framework for applying Kahneman’s model to designing based on the function–behaviour–structure ontology. It casts four instances of designing in this framework: design fixation, case-based design, pattern-language-based design and brainstorming.

In complex products the values of parameters are rarely exactly the required values, rather they often have a margin that might be designed in deliberately or be the incidental results of other design decisions. These margins play a critical role in design processes in managing engineering change and iteration. While engineers often talk about margins informally, designers and researchers also use other terms for specific margin concepts. This paper reviews the existing literature on related concepts and defines margins formally. It discusses the role margins play in handling uncertainty by distinguishing between buffer and excess. Buffer deals with uncertainty and excess with the remaining overcapacity of the design. Buffer can transition into excess of the design solution if the uncertainty can be reduced. The concepts are applied to the temperature margins of several candidate materials for a non-rotary jet engine component. This shows that a clear understanding of margins can help a company to select design alternatives.

The terms design and innovation are intuitively related, but the relationship between these two concepts is more complex and subtle than it appears at first sight. Few authors have made rigorous attempts to explore this relationship in depth, and the contributions present in the literature generally suffer the specialist backgrounds on which they are grounded. Consequently, this paper provides a high-level synthesis of the innovation management domain and defines an original framework that allows the positioning of the concepts from Innovation Management that are most relevant for scholars and practitioners operating in the Design domain. Specifically, this framework provides a concise representation of the typologies of innovation activities along the technology lifecycle, and associates them to their business implications and to technical and organizational implications on the design process. This framework allows scholars and practitioners from both fields to identify the typical design challenges that are inherent to each type of innovation activity, and to evaluate the suitability of specific support methods and tools.

Travelers interact with a large number and variety of products and services during their journeys. The quality of a travel experience depends on a whole urban mobility system considered in space and time. This paper outlines the relevant concepts to be considered in designing urban mobility. The goal is to provide a language and insights for the early stages of a design process. A literature review sheds light on the complexity of urban mobility from technical, sociotechnical, and user experience perspectives. Observations of experiences in urban areas provide data for describing and understanding travel experience patterns and issues. The paper proposes a conceptual model to describe and analyze different facets of traveler experience and categorizes problems that travelers face when they interact with an urban mobility system. A case study is reported illustrating the use of the conceptual model in identifying travel problems for a demand-responsive transport service.

Increasingly, products are designed for global markets, yet studies of design practices primarily investigate designers from high-income countries. Specifically, the use of prototypes during design is likely affected by the background of the designer and the environment in which they are designing. To broaden our understanding of the extent to which prototyping best practices are used beyond Western designers, in this study, we conducted interviews with novice designers from Ghana, a middle-income country (MIC), to examine how Ghanaian novice designers (upper-level undergraduate students) used prototypes throughout their design courses. We compared the reported use of prototypes to best practice behaviors and analyzed the types of prototypes used. We found evidence that these Ghanaian novice designers used some critical prototyping best practice behaviors, while other behaviors were underutilized, specifically during the front-end phases of design and for the purpose of engaging with stakeholders. Additionally, virtual models dominated their prototyping choices. We discuss likely reasons for these trends based on participants’ design experiences and design contexts.

When a change request is raised in an engineering project an ad hoc team often forms to manage the request. Prior research shows that practitioners often view engineering changes in a risk-averse manner. As a project progresses the cost of changes increases. Therefore, avoiding changes is reasonable. However, a risk-averse perspective fails to recognize that changes might harbor discoverable and exploitable opportunities. In this research, we investigated how practitioners of ad hoc teams used practices and praxes aimed at discovering and exploiting opportunities in engineering change requests. A single case study design was employed using change request records and practitioner interviews from an engineering project. 87 engineering change requests were analyzed with regards to change triggers, time-to-decision and rejection rate. In total, 25 opportunities were discovered and then 17 exploited. Three practices and six praxes were identified, used by practitioners to discover and exploit opportunities. Our findings emphasize the importance of the informal structure of ad hoc teams, to aid in opportunity discovery. The informal structure enables cross-hierarchal discussions and draws on the proven experience of the team members. Thus, this research guides project managers and presumptive ad hoc teams in turning engineering changes into successful opportunities.

During the early stages of any system design, a thorough exploration of the design space can prove to be challenging and computationally expensive. The challenges are further exacerbated when dealing with complex systems, such as an aircraft, due to the high dimensionality of their design space. Arising from the Toyota Product Development System, set-based design allows parallel evaluation of multiple alternative configurations in the early design stages. At the same time, optimisation methods can be employed at later stages to fine-tune the engineering characteristics of design variants. Presented in this paper, is the Augmented set-based Design and OPTimisation (ADOPT) Framework that introduces a novel methodology for integrating the two areas. This allows for a thorough design-space exploration while ensuring the optimality of the selected designs. The framework has been developed using a process-independent and tool-agnostic approach so that it can be applied to the design process of varying kinds of systems. To demonstrate the implementation and potential benefits, the framework has been applied to the design of a generic aircraft fuel system. The results from the case study and the framework itself are discussed, with a number of areas for further development and future work being identified and presented.

The construction of future technological systems in work domains that do not yet exist, known as the envisioned world problem, is an increasingly important topic for designers, particularly given the rapid rate of technological advancement in the modern era. This paper first discusses the theoretical underpinnings of using cognitive work analysis (CWA) for developing a decision support system (DSS) situated within the envisioned world problem and recasts the problem as pathway-dependent processes. Using this pathway-dependent framework, each stage of the envisioning process is described to reveal how human factors experts can link existing work domains to envisioned instances. Finally, a case study example of the envisioning process that incorporates CWA modelling is demonstrated as it pertains to the advancement of the human spaceflight domain. As a result, this paper provides a unified treatment of the envisioned world problem with an end-to-end example of one approach to designing future technologies for future work domains.