Design is widely understood as a domain-independent notion, comprising any activity concerned with creating artefacts. This paper shows that models can be viewed as artefacts, and that the design of models resembles the design of artefacts in other domains. The function-behaviour-structure (FBS) ontology of design is applied to models, mapping generic characteristics of models derived from literature on modelling onto basic, design-ontological categories. An example of model design, namely the CRISP-DM model for designing data mining models, is analysed and compared with models of designing in other domains (systems engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, and service design). The results show that there are fundamental commonalities but also differences, revealing the need for further research in developing a theory of model design.

Collaboration is common practice within design disciplines and beyond. Brainstorming, discussions, and prototyping tend to occur within the same physical space. The reduction of human interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these practices. In this paper, we focus on the possibilities and challenges of remote prototyping of four student teams by combining a double diamond approach with tools to overcome remote work challenges. The results were analyzed to understand crucial tools, advantages, and obstacles. The key challenges and opportunities were then identified and examined.

The rise in the number of people living with long-term conditions is precipitating a shift towards the development of wearable technologies that can monitor our health remotely. This shift makes it possible to rethink the healthcare structure towards awareness and proactive prevention instead of treatment through empowering users, e.g. patients for self-management of their health. In a sector towards individual specialization and relying on personal healthcare management, design has a key role in user participation and engagement. This paper reports a co-design study that empowered the participants as designers to design human-centred interventions that foster sun protection behaviour in young men. The findings from this study show the following: 1) sun protection concepts to enhance young men's engagement in sun protection behaviour, 2) the integration of gender-aware design in digital health wearables contributes towards better user engagement in wearable technologies of the future.

In industry, there is at once a strong need for innovation and a need to preserve the existing system of production. Thus, although the literature insists on the necessity of the current change toward Industry 4.0, how to implement it remains problematic because the preservation of the factory is at stake. Moreover, the question of the evolution of the system depends on its innovative capability, but it is difficult to understand how a new rule can be designed and implemented in a factory. This tension between preservation and innovation is often explained in the literature as a process of creative destruction. Looking at the problem from another perspective, this article models the factory as a site of creative heritage, enabling creation within tradition, i.e., creating new rules while preserving the system of rules. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the model. The paper shows that design in the factory relies on the ability to validate solutions. To do so, the design process can explore and give new meaning to the existing rules. The role of innovation management is to choose the degree of revision of the rules and to make it possible.

Enhancing the appearance of physical prototypes with digital elements, also known as mixed prototyping, has demonstrated to be a valuable approach in the product development process. However, the adoption is limited also due to the high time and competence required for authoring the digital contents. This paper presents a content authoring tool that aims to improve the user acceptance by reducing the specific competence required, which is needed for segmentation and UV mapping of the 3D model used to implement a mixed prototype. Part of the tasks related to 3D modelling software, in fact, has been transferred to simpler manual tasks applied onto the physical prototype. Moreover, the proposed tool can recognise these manual inputs thanks to a computer-vision algorithm and automatically manage the segmentation and UV mapping tasks, freeing time for the user in a task that otherwise would require complete engagement. To preliminarily evaluate effectiveness and potential of the tool, it has been used in a case study to build up the mixed prototype of a coffee machine. The result demonstrated that the tool can correctly segment the 3D model of a physical prototype in its relevant parts and generate their corresponding UV maps.

When designing high performance sports equipment for Paralympic athletes, there are many unknowns for the design engineer to consider. The design challenge is an optimisation task per individual athlete. However, modelling this optimisation is difficult due to the many variables. This article presents the design of an experiment for identifying and evaluating various seating positions in Paralympic rowing by using a rowing ergometer with a modified seat. Results indicate that changing seating position has a substantial impact on per-athlete rowing performance.

In current era of Anthropocene, human activities and their consequences on Earth ecosystems are under the lens of scientific research. Researchers in every field of study are trying to find alternatives to promote sustainable development. So it is for design, where researchers exploiting the problem-framing and problem-solving nature of the design discipline itself, trying to find new methodologies and tools to enhance sustainable development.

One of the most important tasks in the design for a sustainable production is focused on material selection. In this paper, authors will present a reflection upon material selection methods and an overview of existing material repositories. Traditionally, material selection is usually attributed to designers or technical professionals but nowadays information concurring in materials selection became a complex task to manage. Therefore, authors propose a case study concerning information management upon materials and their selection presented in a new possible approach: material selection as a collaborative task between several departments of an industrial company, to promote an aware information management activity upon materials.

Remaining seated for extended periods increases the risk health issues and discomfort perception. Consequently, the seat-pan design is crucial and could be mainly influenced by two factors: pressure distribution and seat contour. For seat pan discomfort, the lower average pressure is accompanied by less discomfort. Moreover, a seat contour with a large contact area is correlated with more comfort. Thus, a shaped cushion had been accurately designed (Virtual Prototype) and realized (Physical Prototype) aiming to translate the pressure distribution due to interaction between seat and buttock in a geometric shape, suitable for the international population (including P5 females and P95 males). With this shape, the pressure should be more uniform and lower, the contact area at interface bigger, and the perceived comfort higher. Both Virtual and Physical Prototype design had been described in this paper through a repeatable and straightforward approach. Also, experiments had been performed to validate the hypothesis through a comparison with a standard flat cushion. Results showed the goal of the design had been reached: the shaped cushion scored less pressure distribution and higher contact area than the flat cushion.

Massive data are surrounding us in our daily lives. Urban mobility generates a very high number of complex data reflecting the mobility of people, vehicles and objects. Transport operators are primary users who strive to discover the meaning of phenomena behind traffic data, aiming at regulation and transport planning. This paper tackles the question "How to design a supportive tool for visual exploration of digital mobility data to help a transport analyst in decision making?” The objective is to support an analyst to conduct an ex post analysis of train circulation and passenger flows, notably in disrupted situations. We propose a problem-solution process combined with data visualisation. It relies on the observation of operational agents, creativity sessions and the development of user scenarios. The process is illustrated for a case study on one of the commuter line of the Paris metropolitan area. Results encompass three different layers and multiple interlinked views to explore spatial patterns, spatio-temporal clusters and passenger flows. We join several transport network indicators whether are measured, forecasted, or estimated. A user scenario is developed to investigate disrupted situations in public transport.

Feedback loops are a key characteristic of engineering design processes that increase complexity, time to market, and costs. However, some feedback loops, due to design iteration, have a positive impact on design outcomes (i.e., the quality of the final design), so are worth the time and costs incurred. Other loops, resulting from rework, also have a positive impact on the final design but their impact on current projects, in terms of their urgency and so interruption, is high. Thus, overall, and drawing on socio-technical systems literature, some feedback loops are virtuous circles with a positive impact whereas others are vicious circles with a negative impact. In this paper, we report early work exploring these interplays between rework and design iteration through the development of process simulation models.

The early use of Robust Design (RD) supports the development of product concepts with low sensitivity to variation, which offers advantages for reducing the risk of costly iterations. Due to the lack of approaches for early evaluation of product robustness, the embodiment-function-relation and tolerance (EFRT-) model was developed, which combines the contact and channel approach and tolerance graphs. The information exchange of both approaches offers a high potential for reliable robustness evaluation results. However, that potential currently relies unused, since the link between applicable robustness criteria and the extended information is missing. To solve this problem, four research steps were determined: (1) understanding of robustness, (2) collection of RD principles, (3) identification of EFRT-model information and (4) mapping of RD principles and information. The results show nine adapted RD principles, the identified model information for the robustness evaluation, the evaluation criteria as well as their mapping. Utilizing the mapping and the proposed criteria in this contribution, a more comprehensive robustness evaluation in early stages is enabled.

Design methods are claimed to support designers but, although they are largely taught in academia, their industrial uptake is still lacking. Many reasons have been identified about this flaw and some potential suggestions have been proposed and discussed in literature to overcome the problem. However, a further evidence is that although many students learn such methods from years, they partially or totally abandon the learned methods in their professional careers. This could partially explain the gap between academic and industrial diffusion of design methods. Literature provides suggestions for improving the learning experience of students but different didactical contexts may need more tailored solutions. The work shown in this paper exploits the problem solving potentialities of the TRIZ toolset to provide hints for improving a course focused on teaching a systematic conceptual design method. A set of suggestions has been obtained together some guidelines for applying the considered TRIZ tools to other didactical contexts.

This paper presents an interview study aiming to understand the state of the art of how ergonomics designers work in the vehicle development process within the Swedish automotive industry. Ten ergonomic designers from seven different companies participated in the interview study. Results report the ergonomics designers' objectives, workflow, tools, challenges, and ideal work performance tool. We identify four main gaps and research directions that can enhance the current challenges: human behavior predictions, simulation tool usability, ergonomics evaluations, and integration between systems.

The increased demand for customer-adapted product solutions shows an increasing trend of product variety, leading to an increased internal variety and therefore -costs. The concept of modularization provides apossible solution to this challenge by developing modular kits. Nevertheless, modularization methods to not lead to one individual modular kit, but to several alternatives. The decision of which alternative to implement can be crucial to the applying companys succes. During this decision-making both customer- and company perspectives need to be taken into account. This contribution is to present a simulation-based approach to support the decision making by using a model-based configuration system. Furthermore, as classical decision-making processes are based upon historical data, future aspects are usually not taken into account. In order to counteract this situation, this contribution intends to simulate as well future aspects impacting the modular product architecture. In this case, the simulation is used in order to evaluate the individual performances of a Design-for-Variety product architecture as opposed to a Design-for-Future-Robustness by applying this method to the example of customer-individual laser machines.

The use of agile methods can also be advantageous in the development of physical products, as pilot projects have shown so far. However, the transfer of agile methods to the entire organisation is difficult, due to the different, prevailing circumstances of the various development activities. We have therefore defined a new approach subdividing product development into agile technology-driven and traditional product-oriented development. This model considers the methodological characteristics and thus enables the combination of the benefits of both agile and traditional development methods..

This paper proposes an approach for capital goods manufacturers to design Product-Service System (PSS) pilot projects by selecting appropriate products and customers. The authors conducted a single-case empirical study as a part of an ongoing action research project to maximise the learnings from a pilot project while minimising expenditure in extensive trial and error PSS solution testing. Two sets of criteria were elicited for product and customer selection, respectively, followed by a description of the ideal product and customer attributes for each of the three most common PSS archetypes.

The capacity of building services in many hospitals exceeds the requirements by significant amounts. Oversizing of building services has a direct impact on building efficiency and operational costs, ultimately impacting upon patient care, by diverting much needed funding. A key factor leading to the oversizing is the excessive and uncoordinated application of design margins across various project stages. Based on a hospital case study, this paper analyses the reasons for the overdesign of a replacement cooling system and raises the importance of managing margins activity to avoid overdesign.

The transmission of information between requirements modelling and function modelling in the product development process often appears challenging because of multiple used models and different terminology of specific disciplines. The integrated function modelling (IFM) framework is used for functional analysis of technical moderate complex systems and supports cross-disciplinary modelling and communication in the design team. To improve the applicability of this method and its supporting purpose in the modelling process, the authors combined requirements as an additional entity with the existing entities of this method. Furthermore, the extended framework has been used to visualise the procedure with this approach as an example. The outlook provides the potential for further development of the method.

This article presents a design of an experiment for investigating the effect of changing the geometry of Paralympic alpine sit-ski poles/outriggers in the LW 10-12 class. An experiment design for mapping an individual athlete’s performance parameters has been developed, with a resolution for finding the optimal outrigger geometry. By prototyping an adjustable experiment setup with implemented sensor systems, the performance increase can be analysed and implemented in new equipment. Results show that changing double poling geometry provides a substantial performance increase, regarding time and propulsive force.

The My Naturewatch project uses self-build wildlife cameras supporting new public engagements with nature & technology. The project used Open Design methods providing self-defined, bespoke making outputs, modelling ‘environmental citizenship’, transitioning beyond sustainability. By co-designing makers were encouraged to engage with ecosystems refocusing human habitats & perspectives driven by curiosity. The article shares a qualitative evaluation of the project's impact on participants, describing attitudes, understanding and behaviour towards technology & nature changed by participation.