Prototyping as a central method within innovation- and product development processes has a high acceptance in industry. Various prototyping tools provide impressive visualizations of product ideas in early development stages and especially low fidelity prototyping methods seem easily applicable. However, a closer look at prototyping in practice reveals a number of misunderstandings and barriers regarding effective prototyping, often related to different stakeholders’ (e.g., developer, designer, client) ideas about the purpose of prototyping. Based on a combination of literature analysis, adapting existing models and methods in user centered design (e.g., personas, double diamond design process) and empirical results from industrial research cooperation, we introduce a focus group format and a first model of prototyping maturity, which can help organizations to reflect on their state of practice in prototyping on an individual, team, and organizational level. The maturity model also forms a valuable theoretical lens for design research. Thus, our research aims at researchers in the field of prototyping as well as practitioners involved in prototyping and innovation processes.

The healthcare sector is facing significant challenges that require a systems approach, resulting in a rapid growth in the application of systems approaches in healthcare since the beginning of the 21st century. Consequently, healthcare practitioners and policymakers now desire to understand the evidence-base for the approach, but little evidence of the kind desired exists. This paper is a first step in conducting a narrative review of the application of systems approaches in healthcare based on a systematic review of the academic and grey literature. First, the emergence of the approach in healthcare is explored. Second, specific examples of applications of systems approaches in healthcare are examined to identify any missing elements in current practice. Third, fourteen reviews of the approach in healthcare published in the last ten years are analysed. The results suggest that the use of the approach in healthcare will most likely continue to increase, however, significant work remains for the design and systems community to demonstrate the effectiveness of systems approaches, specifically in providing convincing measures of impact on patient and service outcomes.

Design and engineering are fundamental activities in shaping the world we live in. Educating new generations in design and engineering, therefore, is crucial to build a better and more sustainable world. The changes in education for the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy, in particular, has become a priority for many educators. Aligned with the circular economy, a promising umbrella concept and practice called 'upcycling' is emerging. The concepts and practices in the circular economy and upcycling overlap depending on the definitions of the terms in various disciplines and sectors in different parts of the world. This has caused some confusion and misunderstanding. For educators aiming to teach students about sustainable design, production and consumption, it is beneficial to distinguish between these two concepts. Understanding the relationships (or interrelationships) between them in theory and practice is important for the educators to offer clear guidance and recommendations to future designers and engineers. This paper provides literature review on upcycling and circular economy, compares these two concepts, and visualises their interrelationship as draft teaching materials for design education.

Introducing irrigation to smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can increase food security, improve nutrition, and reduce poverty. To explore the possibility of using drip irrigation on smallholder farms in SSA, we introduce a feasibility study that views the design space from both a user-centered lens, explaining how drip might be successful in the future, and from an engineering lens. With a first-order model, we compare estimated capital costs of drip and sprinkler systems for various farm profiles and show that drip has the potential to be a viable technology for many farms in SSA.

Product development in today's manufacturing companies is characterized by multiple development projects under intense time constraints. This means that the success of projects impacts the company's success significantly. However, industrial practices show that many projects fail to meet their time targets. This paper presents a methodology to systematically improve project schedule adherence of development projects by combining exploratory data analysis of historic project data with project scheduling optimizations to enhance the project schedules and enable more successful projects.

When assessing the sustainability of a product, an ideal life cycle is considered which could include the “Use” and “End of Life” phases. Does human behaviour affect the environmental sustainability? This paper intends to propose a methodological framework for assessing sustainable behavioural scenarios. The framework will be then developed in a specific case study on Compostable Single Use Products (CSUPs), with the aim of designing the identity of compostable materials for packaging in order to guide consumers to behave in a sustainable way in CSUPs disposal phase.

The present work introduces a cyclical model which showcases the process of immersion during Immersive Technological Experiences (ITEs) such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. This model is based on the identified concepts around immersion and immersive environments across 30 years. The concepts' similarities were used to organize them on a cyclical model by acknowledging the user's presence at the beginning and end of immersive experiences. The proposed model's value relies on its cyclical approach based on a user-centred perspective and having a general overview of the immersion process. The Immersive cycle can serve as a mapping tool for developers and researchers, thanks to the inclusion of guidelines that complements the model. Both of these were used in three different examples of ITEs. Furthermore, the cyclical model could be used as a tool for ideation and conceptualization during the early stages of developing immersive experiences. Nevertheless, it is recognized that this is the first step in developing this model; therefore, it still needs to be validated and improved based on tests with developers, designers and researchers in the field.

In top-down design, optimal component requirements are difficult to derive, as the feasible components that satisfy these requirements are yet to be designed and hence unknown. Meta models that provide feasibility and mass estimates for component performance are used for optimal requirement decomposition in an existing approach. This paper (1) extends its applicability adapting it to varying design domains, and (2) increases its efficiency by active-learning. Applying it to the design of a robot arm produces a result that is 1% heavier than the reference obtained by monolithic optimization.

Overspecification or excess margin in a design can enhance its ability to absorb changes and uncertainty, but also deteriorates performance criteria such as weight and cost. This paper shows how the Margin Value Method (article in review) can be applied in conjunction with CAE tools such as FEA to quantify excess margin where a design is too complex for algebraic analysis. This new application context for the MVM is illustrated using a case study of a flange coupling design, in which topology optimisation is used within the MVM to identify opportunities for design improvement.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have shown stupendous power in generating realistic images to an extend that human eyes are not capable of recognizing them as synthesized. State-of-the-art GAN models are capable of generating realistic and high-quality images, which promise unprecedented opportunities for generating design concepts. Yet, the preliminary experiments reported in this paper shed light on a fundamental limitation of GANs for generative design: lack of novelty and diversity in generated samples. This article conducts a generative design study on a large-scale sneaker dataset based on StyleGAN, a state-of-the-art GAN architecture, to advance the understanding of the performance of these generative models in generating novel and diverse samples (i.e., sneaker images). The findings reveal that although StyleGAN can generate samples with quality and realism, the generated and style-mixed samples highly resemble the training dataset (i.e., existing sneakers). This article aims to provide future research directions and insights for the engineering design community to further realize the untapped potentials of GANs for generative design.

This article aims to contribute to the knowledge on product/service system (PSS) design practice as follows. First, a new rationale for why PSS design in practice often does not exploit its full potential is given based on a theory on inseparability of services. Second, a representation of the dependencies between product design parameters (DPs) and service DPs in a form of potential-dependency knowledge base is proposed as a remedy. Third, reusability of the knowledge captured from product-service integration across sectorial borders is shown with PSS design at a complex product manufacturer.

Previous research has shown that experienced and novice individuals behave and think differently. Although experienced individuals are better at solving problems, organisations are constantly forming teams of experienced and novice designers to work together on their projects. It is crucial to understand how these teams affect the design outcomes. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate how collaborative design teams perform when composed of varying numbers of experienced and novice agents. Specifically in this paper, teams work on a routine task and design outcomes are measured in terms of quality, variety, and exploration of the design space. Since the parameters in the empirical laboratory experiments are difficult to control, an agent-based model was used to simulate these teams. In general, the results show that a team of novice agents with a small number of experienced agents produces solutions of higher quality than an all novice team of agents. However, an all novice team of agents does provide a higher variety of solutions. These results have important implications when teams of experienced and novice designers are formed to work together in practice.

The concepts of high-velocity, complexity and interdependency are nowadays vividly discussed in design-led innovation management. Design organisations seek to manage innovation in a more dynamic way to ensure competitive advantage and long-term competitiveness. Contextual ambidexterity is advised to be a dynamic capability that can facilitate firms to effectively manage incremental and radical innovation alike. This paper proposes an approach that focuses on the individual and the underlying thinking which bases its foundations on ambidextrous leadership, abductive reasoning and strategic fit.

This work features challenges of using integrated reflections in undergraduate Industrial Design and Engineering. Reflection activities can be challenging for the students and hard to implement in design and engineering classes. This report has two goals. The first is to introduce a process for more successful engagement for the students in problem solving and design. The second is to show that the process has validity and usefulness for Industrial Design students who are in a College of Design.

Sustainable Product Development (SPD) has been gaining increased attention in academia, industry, and policy. Over the past three decades, significant progress has been observed in incorporation of environmental issues into the product development process, through the so-called ecodesign management practices. Nevertheless, systematisation of the SPD practices, which simultaneously consider the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability, is still missing. To address this gap, this research aims to identify the existing SPD management practices in the academic literature, with special focus on how sustainability dimensions are currently being considered, their coverage in relation to key knowledge areas for product development and their applicability across the SPD phases. Through a systematic literature review, 362 practices were identified and further classified according to a classification criteria. While environmental considerations are still the most prominent ones, the research highlights the importance of the early stages of product development for SPD, as well as the key knowledge areas which are currently being covered by the practices, such as sustainability evaluation and sustainability improvement.

Novelty can be evaluated from the perspective of the designer who creates a concept (personal novelty), and people who perceive it post-creation (socio-novelty). In each case, the extent to which the concept is new compared to known artefacts is judged. The designer's evaluation is based on the same knowledge from which the concept was produced. Thus, if the concept is novel to the designer, creative cognitive processing must have occurred, i.e. something new was created in the mind. Evaluations made by other people are based on their own knowledge, which may differ from the designer's. Thus, concepts they view as novel are not necessarily the output of creative cognition. In this paper, we posit that personal novelty is directly related to designer cognition, whilst socio-novelty is not. However, existing metrics focus on the latter, and may be misleading in cognitive studies. To stimulate discussion, we formalise personal and socio-novelty in the Novelty Perspectives Framework. Empirical data suggests that the perspectives may be distinguished in practice. Future implications of the NPF are explored, highlighting the potential for insights at both the cognitive and neural level.

In recent years, reducing cost and lead time in product development and qualification has become decisive to stay competitive in the space industry. Introducing Additive Manufacturing (AM) could potentially be beneficial from this perspective, but high demands on product reliability and lack of knowledge about AM processes make implementation challenging. Traditional approaches to qualification are too expensive if AM is to be used for critical applications in the near future. One alternative approach is to consider qualification as a design factor in the early phases of product development, potentially reducing cost and lead time for development and qualification as products are designed to be qualified. The presented study has identified factors that drive qualification activities in the space industry and these “qualification drivers” serve as a baseline for a set of proposed strategies for developing “Design for Qualification” guidelines for AM components. The explicit aim of these guidelines is to develop products that can be qualified, as well as appropriate qualification logics. The presented results provide a knowledge-base for the future development of such guidelines.

This paper presents a test bed for AI technology on the integration of creative AI (CAI) with hybrid design tools (HDTs). The objective is to build and develop tools and programs for creative people (e.g. designers, engineers) to use, whereby the artificial intelligence (AI) software acts as a creative collaborator rather than a mere tool. The goal is to find a set of guiding principles, metaphors and ideas that inform the development of a CAI praxis imbued with computational support tools, new theories, experiments, and applications. Results and findings are presented of early-stage research.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers the potential to increase the ability to customise large-scale plastic components. However, a substantial amount of manual work is still required during the customisation process, both in design and manufacturing.

This paper looks into how the additive manufacturing of mass customised large-scale products can be supported. Data was collected through interaction with industrial partners and potential customers in a case study regarding the customisation of kayaks.

As a result, the paper proposes a model-based methodology which combines design automation with a user interface.

The results point to the benefit of the proposed methodology in terms of design efficiency, as well as in terms of displaying results to the end user in an understandable format.

Lightweight potential is a powerful indicator – but not as powerful as it could be. Current methods for analyzing a product's potential to be reduced in mass only deal with a few of the most important criteria for lightweight design. The amount of literature dealing with lightweight design is significant, yet it can help to understand these versatile criteria. Firstly, the literature on this topic will therefore be reviewed to derive a broad set of criteria used in contemporary lightweight design. Secondly, a further review will reveal the criteria used to derive lightweight potential. Subsequently, both sets will be compared to identify the missing criteria used for the derivation of lightweight potential. This will support designers in two ways. On the one hand, matching and combining both criteria sets will enable the most representative criteria for a particular design case to be chosen, thus leading to a more comprehensible derivation of lightweight potential. On the other hand, the combination set will provide a basis for designers and design teams to refine their understanding of their own motivations for conducting lightweight design.