The advent of immersive and interactive technologies has facilitated the growth of the museum and gallery sector by offering a variety of new experiences. In the UK and China, in particular, the museum and gallery sector lies at the heart of the creative industries and makes a significant contribution to cultural growth. Both countries have recognised the impact of such technologies on the growth of the sector and have actively sought opportunities to use them for bilateral collaboration. However, the interest in immersive and interactive technologies among museum and gallery audiences remains underexplored, as do their preferences and behavioural patterns with respect to such technologies. This study discusses the key findings of user research, exploring the awareness, experiences and preferences of current museum and gallery audiences regarding (i) immersive and interactive museum and gallery experiences and (ii) the cultural exchange between the UK and China.

Traditionally, data has been presented in textual format and the interaction with the user confined to the keyboard or touch screen to input data and the screen to deliver information. However, with the advent of a data-driven society, an opportunity for more natural and efficient ways of presenting data and interacting with it has emerged.

Although the area of Human-Computer Interaction has existed for a long time, its focus has always been on the interaction with an artefact (the computer). Today instead, we face the challenge of interacting with an intangible object: data. As a result, a key requirement emerges: How do we make legible the enormous amounts of data produced per day to ordinary people?

Designers, able to devise natural and smooth interaction experiences, should play a relevant role in this new scenario. However, they might lack the basic technical knowledge required to understand the possibilities of these new systems.

In this paper we present a brief how-to manual for an undergraduate course on data materialisation: the process of transforming an intangible object (data) in an artefact that can be interacted with in a physical way.

Estimating the costs of products during development to design a cost efficent product is a well established process. But in the case of Product-Service Systems estimating the costs of the individual product is not sufficent. Instead it is necessary to calculate the cost incured over the entire life cycle of the product. Because with Product-Service Systems the majority of costs is not incurred during manufacturing of the product but instead during the operation. One of the major cost components accruing during the operation of the product are the maintennace costs. Therefore, current life cycle costing models show the impoact of component design on the maintennace cost of the Product-Service System. But they do not show how different maintennace strategies that can have an impact on the overall life cycle costs of the Product-Service System. Thus, this paper shows a method for the implementation of different maintennace strategies into life cycle costing and applies it in an industrial use case.

Prototyping is a key part of the design process, with artefacts increasingly fabricated using 3D printing methods. However, these printed parts often lack internal structure and the mass properties of the artefact – mass, balance and moments of inertia – differ from the design. It is hypothesised that a stakeholder's assessment of a design is affected by this misrepresentation. The work presented demonstrates that mass properties have a significant effect on stakeholder perception of prototypes. This is done through a study of University of Bristol students and consultation with industry.

The sustainability of rigid packaging can be increased by using biocomposites in packaging. Existing frameworks have some limitations such as are made to assess a few aspects, conventional packaging parameters are considered, etc. Biocomposite has a slightly different scenario at various life cycle stages, like the end-of-life cycle process. To assess the sustainability of biocomposite rigid packaging, we must consider parameters related to the biocomposite-based rigid packaging materials life cycle. These are categorised into different aspects of sustainability and life cycle phases.

Digitalization and sustainability are major challenges for today's manufacturing industry. While digitalization is characterized by the incorporation of digital technologies in the products and services as well as the value creation architectures, sustainability requires them to balance economic, environmental and social issues. In both areas, especially Product Service Systems (PSS) are constantly gaining importance. This results in so called smart PSS that integrate digital technologies as well as sustainable PSS which aim at a positive impact on sustainability. Both two concepts cannot be clearly delimited since smart PSS might be designed for sustainability as well and sustainable PSS might be used with digital technologies. This paper aims to investigate the interrelations. To that, digitalization patterns of products and services are evaluated regarding their sustainable impact. The evaluation is conducted by a survey in research and industry. Furthermore, the design of the underlying value creation architecture is investigated. Here, a methodology is proposed enabling companies to optimize their value creation architecture.

More than 15 years after the publication of the agile manifesto of software development, agile development approaches have also reached the processes of physical product development. Because of the boundary conditions and requirements here, which differ strongly from those of pure software development, these approaches often reach their limits. However, research and practice have quickly recognized that hybrid approaches integrate the strengths of agile and plan-driven development. This paper presents 25 hybrid development approaches that have been identified in a Systematic Literature Review.

Linear production is related to resource scarcity and negative environmental impacts. Circular Economy (CE) emerged for society transition towards sustainability, based on regenerative systems and multiple life cycle products. Product Life cycle Management (PLM) supports the whole life cycle with the aid of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). A literature review analyzed the role of ICT enabling CE based on PLM, identifying challenges and opportunities, active and passive PLM, system perspective, stakeholder's role, and sustainability. Concluding that ICT enables the CE transition.

One of the main tasks of today's data-driven design is to learn customers' concerns from the feedback data posted on the internet, to drive smarter and more profitable decisions during product development. Feature-based opinion mining was first performed by the computer and design scientists to analyse online product reviews. In order to provide more sophisticated customer feedback analyses and to understand in a deeper way customer concerns about products, the authors propose an affordance-based online review analysis framework. This framework allows understanding how and in what condition customers use their products, how user preferences change over years and how customers use the product innovatively. An empirical case study using the proposed approach is conducted with the online reviews of Kindle e-readers downloaded from amazon.com. A set of innovation leads and redesign paths are provided for the design of next-generation e-reader. This study suggests that bridging data analytics with classical models and methods in design engineering can bring success for data-driven design.

To objectively and quantitatively study transcribed protocols of design problem solving conversations, we propose a semantic analysis approach based on dynamic semantic networks of nouns constructed with WordNet 3.1 lexical database. We examined the applicability of the semantic approach focused on a dynamic evaluation of the design problem solving process in educational settings. Using a case of real- world design problem-solving conversations, we show that the approach is able to determine the time dynamics of semantic factors such as level of abstraction, polysemy or information content, and quantify convergence/divergence of semantic similarity in design conversations between students, instructors and real clients. The approach can also be used to evaluate the aforementioned semantic factors for successful and unsuccessful ideas generated in the process of design problem solving, or to assess the effect of external feedback on the developed design solution. The proposed semantic analysis approach allows fast computation of the semantic factors in real time thereby demavonstrating a potential for both monitoring and support of the design problem solving process.

Coworking spaces – the most prevalent form of collaborative workplaces – are said to offer the ideal solution for a new generation of creative knowledge workers, balancing flexibility and independence with structure and community. Recent studies, however, highlight deficiencies as they relate to the promise of ‘community’ made by most coworking spaces. This work reports 16 barriers that impede the process of human connectivity in coworking spaces that emerged from in-depth interviews with 26 coworkers. Suggestions are made for how these barriers might inform more effective workplace design.

Lightweight design (LWD) is partly reaching its limits. New technologies must not only be used to make products more functional, but also to make LWD more efficient. Here additive manufacturing (AM) should be named. Potentials of the use in LWD are not yet clear. In this work, existing LWD strategies and their location in the design process are presented. Criteria are worked out which influence the design process and the use of LWD strategies. The use of AM in (hybrid) LWD will be investigated in order to overcome design trade-offs and what influence its use could have on the design process.

Prototyping uses many models over its process, with varying strength and weakness offered by those in the physical vs digital domains. Working across domains is necessary but introduces a transition cost, process complexities, and risks lost learning. Drawing from Digital Twinning, this work explores the creation of integrated physical-digital prototyping workflows, where technology enables simultaneous cross-domain working. It contrasts four case-study implementations of integrated prototyping workflow to current practice, exploring feasibility, value, and implementation challenges.

Prototypes are critical design artifacts, and recent studies have established the ability of prototypes to facilitate communication. However, prior work suggests that novice designers often fail to perceive prototypes as effective communication tools, and struggle to rationalize design decisions made during prototyping tasks. To understand the interactions between communication and prototypes, design pitches from 40 undergraduate engineering design teams were collected and qualitatively analysed. Our findings suggest that students used prototypes to explain and persuade, aligning with prior studies of design practitioners. The results also suggest that students tend to use prototypes to justify design decisions and adverse outcomes. Future work will seek to understand novice designers’ use of prototypes as communication tools in further depth. Ultimately, this work will inform the creation of pedagogical strategies to provide students with the skills needed to effectively communicate design solutions and intent.

Selecting a suitable file format for data exchange in additive manufacturing is fundamental when designing these digital process chains. Within the scope of this investigation, alternatives to the de-facto industry standard STL are to be found to overcome the disadvantages of the STL-based digital process chain.

Therefore, suitable file formats are identified by conducting literature and market research and evaluated regarding their suitability to support a continuous digital process chain. In addition, typical use cases in additive manufacturing are defined, and their requirements for a file format for data exchange are derived. Finally, for each use case defined, recommended and suitable file formats are proposed.

Developing appropriate assistive technology to be manufactured and maintained within the local context of a low-resource setting requires alternative design principles and designerly ways to those used when designing in, or for, more resourced regions of the world. This case study offers an empirical account of the design of SafariSeat, an all-terrain wheelchair which has been designed, tested, manufactured and turned into a sustainable enterprise in East Africa. The wheelchair was developed with intentions to reduce inequality and help alleviate poverty in low-resource communities by improving users' health, wellbeing and participation in society, whilst creating and facilitating local jobs to support communities. Having developed SafariSeat with a human-centred design approach, a local mindset, and prioritisation of usability and affordability, this case study is used to reflect on the applied design principles, practices and processes whilst providing contextual insights for other designers seeking to work in a similar way. The study discusses challenges encountered whilst designing in a low-resource setting, and highlights how local collaboration and partnerships can help lead to the creation of a more sustainable solution.

This paper considers the orientation of product development structures towards interdisciplinary system architectures using the example of a tool machine manufacturer. Due to the change from simple mechanical products to extensively designed systems, whose successful development requires the integration of all disciplines involved, it is analyzed which requirements there are for these interdisciplinary system architectures in today's development environment. In addition, it is validated on the basis of the investigation environment that interdisciplinary system structures are necessary for the development on the different levels of the system view. In doing so, the investigation environment addresses the concept of extracting customer-relevant features (systems) from a physical-tailored modular system (supersystem) in order to develop and test them autonomously, as well as to transfer them to the entire product range in a standardized manner. The elaboration identifies basic requirements for the development of a knowledge base in interdisciplinary system structures and places them into the context of an agile modular kit development.

Without shared experiences, empathy gaps between designers and users are difficult to bridge. Advancing Virtual Reality (VR) has shed new light on this regard by enabling designers to simulate and experience their users' living scenarios in a virtual environment (VE). However, implementing VR-based empathetic design approach requires dealing with critical design questions, such as: (1) whether VR operators can develop empathy for unfamiliar user groups solely based on objective experience and (2) whether VR operators can utilize task-irrelevant contextual information in the VEs. To explore these issues, we designed an experiment based on two VEs with varying levels of detail that simulated the scenes viewed by people with red-green color vision deficiency (CVD). Participants were randomly assigned to either detail-rich or detail-simple VEs to complete neutral item-searching tasks. Results indicate that objective and neutral experience alone cannot elicit empathy towards users, and VR operating designers will utilize task-irrelevant contextual information.

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorized according to the qualities they might provide for affecting creativity. The resulting inventory of creative spaces contributes to the emerging interest on creative workspace design by presenting inspiring best-practice examples. The shown examples provide the readers with a better understanding how a creative space could be designed in order to provide an environment for an innovative organisation. Related literature was added to explain the possible impact of specific spatial configurations.

Maximizing the number of shared components does not always produce cost-optimal product families. Shared components can yield economies of scale due to reuse of components, but also increases material cost due to over dimensioning. In this paper, we present an approach to identify a cost-optimal design for product families. It consists of two steps: (1) identifying a scheme to share components in the product family and (2) finding the cost optimal design for the product family.