The advancements in the field of VR allow designers to use VR as a technology for sketching ideas in a virtual space. In this paper, Gravity Sketch (a VR sketching software) is used as an ideation sketching tool in the process of product styling. The goal of this research is to examine the advantages and points-of-pain when using virtual reality tools in the process of product styling. 29 Master students used the VR sketching tool in their design process and all of them had feedback and insights on the tool.

Patent retrieval and analytics have become common tasks in engineering design and innovation. Keyword-based search is the most common method and the core of integrative methods for patent retrieval. Often searchers intuitively choose keywords according to their knowledge on the search interest which may limit the coverage of the retrieval. Although one can identify additional keywords via reading patent texts from prior searches to refine the query terms heuristically, the process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to human errors. In this paper, we propose a method to automate and augment the heuristic and iterative keyword discovery process. Specifically, we train a semantic engineering knowledge graph on the full patent database using natural language processing and semantic analysis, and use it as the basis to retrieve and rank the keywords contained in the retrieved patents. On this basis, searchers do not need to read patent texts but just select among the recommended keywords to expand their queries. The proposed method improves the completeness of the search keyword set and reduces the human effort for the same task.

The aim of the present work is to show possibilities with which 3D models in virtual reality (VR) can be created and exported. First an overview of the existing hard- and software is given. Subsequently, existing solution concepts are analysed which, however, are not used in product development. Based on these knowledge a concept for the creation of 3D models in VR and the export of these models is developed.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers a new degree in design freedom. However, in order to exploit AM's potentials in end-use products a methodical approach and suitable tools especially during conceptual design are needed. This paper presents a methodology for application in industrial practice, which should support the component conception for additively manufactured products. The approach focuses on a benefit-oriented preparation and provision of knowledge. In addition to general design methods for abstraction and promotion of creativity, AM-specific tools are introduced which support the provision of solution principles and process-specific restrictions. A broad applicability of the solution principles is ensured by an expansion of the solution space through abstraction. Consequently, product developers are sensitised to the new design possibilities of AM, on the one hand. On the other hand, they are supported in a holistic exploitation of design potentials in ideation in order to foster innovative solution ideas. Finally, the methodological procedure and the developed tools will be demonstrated in a workshop by using an example from industrial practice of the automotive sector.

The model of PGE describes the emergence of new systems based on reference by the activities carryover, embodiment and principle variation - qualitatively different manifestations of a transfer process. We investigate indicators which constitute these different manifestations measurably for different types of systems. We propose generalized variation operators to describe system development with respect to different product elements and system types. We use case studies from automotive, production systems and simulation models.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is revered for the design freedom it brings, but is it environmentally better or worse than conventional manufacturing? Since few direct comparisons are published, this study compared AM data from life-cycle assessment literature to conventional manufacturing data from the Granta EduPack database. The comparison included multiple printing technologies for steel, aluminum, and titanium. Results showed that metal AM had far higher CO2 footprints per kg of material processed than casting, extrusion, rolling, forging, and wire drawing, so it is usually a less sustainable choice than these. However, there were circumstances where it was a more sustainable choice, and there was significant overlap between these circumstances and aerospace industry use of metal AM. Notably, lightweight parts reducing embodied material impacts, and reducing use-phase impacts through fuel efficiency. Finally, one key finding was the irrelevance of comparing machining to AM per kg of material processed, since one is subtractive and the other is additive. Recommendations are given for future studies to use more relevant functional units to provide better comparisons.

A key question regarding business model innovation/development for circular economy is “how to make it happen in practice”? By systematically reviewing 92 approaches from circular economy and sustainability literature and practice, this research identifies requirements and proposes a holistic and systemic process for business model innovation for circular economy. This conceptual process model was consolidated based on the integration of the unique elements of sixteen existing process models. It comprises three-stages (sense, seize, transform) based on a dynamic capabilities view, and envisions 33 activities, 21 deliverables, 88 techniques/tools and 13 enablers or catalyzers for change. Besides enabling the view of processes and procedures with behavior and learning skills required to inspire circular economy thinking in business model innovation, it highlights the importance of 'formalized' decision-making procedures and includes activities to integrate sustainability thinking and to support the identification of required changes in product innovation/development.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is one of the most business-critical IT backbones of manufacturing companies. It often consists of numerous, rigidly interwoven monolithic applications and is seen as synonymous with costly maintenance, lack of extensibility, and poor scalability. This paper proposes an approach for transforming a monolithic PLM landscape into a federated Domain and Data Mesh. This enhances semantic interoperability and enables data-driven use cases by treating data as first-class citizens. User-centric PLM domains moreover help to increase productivity in the workplace.

The development of mechatronic systems has always been characterized by continuous handling of uncertainties. This challenge, which is associated with dynamic changes in the development context, is increasingly met by companies in the development of physical systems with the implementation of agile approaches in their development processes. However, since established approaches have their origin in software development, they reach various limits in the context of the development of mechatronic systems, e.g. due to the physical properties of the systems. Other features, such as transparent and flexible project management or targeted and early involvement of customers and users in development processes, can also be implemented in mechatronic system development. In order to derive the potentials and limits of existing agile approaches for the context of mechatronic system development, the present paper compares existing approaches with regard to relevant factors from the context of mechatronic system development. The aim is to create a basis for the targeted development, adaptation and use of agile approaches in the field of mechatronic system development.

To meet rising customer requirements, increasingly complex products have to be virtually validated. To achieve this within the framework of virtual product development, a wide range of aspects has to be taken into account. In this context, tolerance analysis has established itself as a proven tool to evaluate the consequences of geometric part deviations on geometric product characteristics. Existing approaches, however, do not sufficiently take into account production-specific deviations, leading to time-consuming iterations during the product development process. Therefore, the focus of this contribution is on process-oriented interdisciplinary tolerance management that allows the integration of manufacturing simulations into the tolerance analysis. In contrast to the conventional approach, this novel methodology allows to avoid unnecessary iterations in the context of product development and validation. Following the presentation of the novel procedure, the application on a case study of an X- ray shutter is carried out, whereby surrogate models are integrated in order to reduce the computing time.

There are currently limited guidelines on how to design complex assistive technologies (ATs), which necessitates expertise beyond that possessed by designers, occupational therapists (OTs), or end-users. To address this issue, we conducted a series of four participatory workshops to study various configurations of OT-designer-user collaboration in co-designing do-it-yourself (DIY) ATs for an older adult with mobility impairment. We then proposed a specific co-design framework for such OT-designer-user collaboration.

Planned obsolescence can artificially increase sales by stimulating desire or perceived need. This can be done in many ways and some companies are releasing newer models sooner than necessary or engineering the product to fail after a certain amount of use. In recent years, we have observed a change in the pattern of planned obsolescence strategies employed by technological companies, shifting from aesthetic to technological obsolescence. The reaction to this model comes from social enterprises and grassroots movements addressing the circular economy and repairability. This paper illustrates these relationships in context, taking the mobile phone industry as a case study. We focus on product architecture and product features, as a reference point to discuss the embodiment of strategies, and the degree of control the consumer is given for repairing the product. Using netnography as a method to collect data in a digital-mediated environment, this paper highlights how planned obsolescence strategies are embedded in product characteristics and summarises their evolution. It concludes by opposing planned obsolescence strategies to circular economy principles to discuss more sustainable pathways for the smartphone industry.

In the last decades, mental health disorders have been a growing source of the global burden of disease. Thousands of mental health apps are available nowadays addressing this problem, but studies show that the effectiveness of these apps is jeopardized by the low user engagement.

This study investigates the most potentially effective gamification and nudging techniques in design for improving engagement in mental health apps for young people, by carrying out app-reviews for top installed mental health apps on Google play store and connecting it with engagement data, in addition to conducting expert-interviews with professionals from gamification and design background.

From the findings, techniques that participated in improving retention rates included using app character for creating app narrative and user interaction, in addition to adopting a non-forcible language. While to improve app daily duration of use, simplification nudge, and stating the recommended minutes of use found to be useful. Personalization and social interaction techniques were potentially effective for improving the frequency of app daily use. For the young age group, using juicy feedback and high-quality gamification were recommended

Creativity is often said to play a vital role in the product design process, while functionality and aesthetics are considered key factors of actual products. Functionality refers to the performance of a product, and aesthetics represents the visual and ergonomic appeals of the product. However, there appears to be an elusive relation between creativity, functionality and aesthetics. This study explores how functionality, aesthetics and creativity are related to one another in design. Through exploring the definitions and assessments of creativity in design, this study reveals that novelty, usefulness and surprise are the three core elements of design creativity. A case study involving experts evaluating design samples in terms of novelty, usefulness, surprise, functionality, aesthetics and overall creativity is conducted. The results imply that there are no statistically significant relations between creativity, functionality, and aesthetics. Considering the three core elements of design creativity, the results indicate that creativity is only statistically significantly related to novelty. Moreover, our results suggest that creativity and novelty are measuring the same construct.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a potentially revolutionary technique in industry with claims of high skills shortage in the recent days. It is assumed that full exploitation of AM capabilities can be made possible by a paradigm shift steered by engineering design. Future generations of engineers might benefit from Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), which targets AM potential and enables design freedoms. In this context, the paper investigates AM education for a better understanding of the main AM-related subjects taught in universities. To this scope, the authors gathered 52 syllabi of courses taught in highly-ranked technical universities worldwide that relate to AM. From the investigation, it emerges that AM is the core discipline of the course in 42 out of 52 cases and considered widely as an independent domain to date. As for taught subjects, it was found that design aspects in AM and DfAM are poorly focused on, while manufacturing and process areas are the most popular. This poses a challenge especially to the design community, as the current situation might limit the exploitation of AM capabilities.

As additive manufacturing (AM) continues to grow in its abilities, so does the need for a quick and effective method of determining how it should be applied. Over time, these methods are naturally developed and passed on as tacit knowledge. However, with the rapid advancement of AM technologies, identifying parts which are eligible for AM as well as gaining insight on what value it may add to a product needs to be modelled in an objective and transferrable way. This paper presents a framework for determining the candidacy of a part or assembly for AM, represented by its economic feasibility and potential for AM-specific benefits. A set of selection criteria is developed with the goal of fast-screening in mind; that is specific data which can be automatically extracted from CAD models and resource planning databases. A case study is performed to validate the criteria and decision model chosen, as well as gain insight to the potential for a more widespread application. The decision model successfully identified economic feasibility and AM potentials, which suggests the results of the case study show promise for a semi-automatic decision support system for identifying AM candidates.

The Engineering Design field is growing fast and so is growing the number of sub-fields that are bringing value to researchers that are working in this context. From psychology to neurosciences, from mathematics to machine learning, everyday scholars and practitioners produce new knowledge of potential interest for designers.

This leads to complications in the researchers’ aims who want to quickly and easily find literature on a specific topic among a large number of scientific publications or want to effectively position a new research.

In the present paper, we address this problem by using state of the art text mining techniques on a large corpus of Engineering Design related documents. In particular, a topic modelling technique is applied to all the papers published in the ICED proceedings from 2003 to 2017 (3,129 documents) in order to find the main subtopics of Engineering Design. Finally, we analyzed the trends of these topics over time, to give a bird-eye view of how the Engineering Design field is evolving.

The results offer a clear and bottom-up picture of what Engineering design is and how the interest of researchers in different topics has changed over time.

Process models are among the principal artefacts used for managing design projects. However, the selection of effective modelling approaches can be difficult for design project managers, given that a plethora of tools exists for various modelling purposes. In addition to date no systematic approach for the assessment and selection of process modelling approaches is available to practitioners. This paper presents the development of criteria for benchmarking and selecting different process modelling tools. The results are based on three elements. (1) In a four-hour workshop undertaken by the Design Process SIG of the Design Society, bringing together around 20 international researchers and practitioners in design process modelling, an initial set of 58 criteria were brainstormed and consolidated during the workshop and in follow-up meetings. (2) The consolidated criteria were then compared with literature. The finalised criteria list was then validated by external experts in industry (3). The resulting list of 12 criteria provides a sound basis for practitioners to support a systematic selection of process modelling approaches. Further, it lays the foundation of a benchmarking tool, which is subject to future work.

This contribution includes the development and validation of a Virtual Reality (VR) supported creativity technique: “Sensory Stimulus Environment Technique”. Key elements of this technique are the creativity process, a VR tool and the support of the tool (Virtual Creative Environments). The creativity process consists of phases for individual and group-based work. The VR tool “Virtual Creativity” includes functions to support the preparation of Virtual Creative Environments (VCE), the generation and evaluation of new ideas. For the generation of VCE, the tool possesses an environment configurator. Users of this function are supported by Design Rules for VCE.

For the validation of the creativity technique, it was used in a product engineering project. The project members procedure two phases of the creativity process (Preparation and Individual Idea Generation) and used “Virtual Creativity” to generate VCEs and ideas to solve their tasks. By questionnaires, functions of “Virtual Creativity” were assessed for generating VCEs and ideas.

Conceptual design, as an early phase of the design process, is known to have the highest impact on determining the innovation level of design results. Although many tools exist to support designers in conceptual design, additional knowledge, especially knowledge related to emerging technologies, is still often needed. In this paper the authors aim to propose a data-driven creative concept generation and evaluation approach to support designers in incorporating emerging technologies in the new product early development stage. The approach is demonstrated by means of an illustrated example.