Although it's human centered focus, design thinking has proven to be effective also in technology-driven projects, both in education and business. Yet, scant research has investigated whether and how design thinking might be leveraged to find new opportunities based on emerging technologies and design new innovation concepts accordingly. To address this gap, we employed an Action Innovation Management Research framework and co-designed a program called Tech to Market with Oper.Space, the design factory for Open Innovation of the University of Bologna. We ran 5 iterations of the program from October 2018 to December 2022, in which we conducted 52 interviews, observed 10 presentations, and held 10 meetings with the main stakeholders involved. Our results show how to apply design thinking to find and design a suitable application for a given technology, contributing to the ongoing conversation about the implementation of design thinking in technology-driven projects.

Prototypes are often used as a tool in the product development process and their usage is advised in many guidelines, frameworks and product development methods. Those prototypes achieve different goals of which most relate to getting new insights and information about the product in development. For the development of those prototypes however, significantly less development methods are available compared to the number of methods for the development of products. Investigating the process of using a prototype leads to the idea that the main purpose of those prototypes is describable as learning about the product. This idea is elaborated further and followed by the introduction of the detailed process model for prototyping which is primarily based on the detailed process model for products. However, the purpose of the prototype differs from the purpose of the product which leads to some significant changes of the model. To give an example of a prototyping process, the development of a sensor- integrating elastic claw coupling is introduced and analysed. In addition, this paper discusses the question, how other product development models may be applied to the development of prototypes.

With the introduction of ‘5G’ data transfer gets faster and further reaching than ever before. This new communication technology paves the way for an exchange of skills and competencies between humans and machines. This raises the question of how future users can profit and understand the potential brought about by these technologies. This paper elaborates the use of demonstrators in a pilot study as research tools and assesses their potential. It gives first insights why demonstrators are suitable to set a basis for public recognition for body-worn CPS and how to promote innovative visions.

Half of the total greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of biodiversity loss come from resource extraction and processing. (EC 2020). To counter this, we must switch to sustainable, long-lasting products and slow down the use of resources. It is clear that these systems will not be fixed by incremental changes but by a series of disruptions. This article uses the Aristotelian causalities as a vehicle to break down the concept of “why” industrial design and discuss the underlying value propositions of distributed manufacturing. This critical perspective allows designers and engineers to bridge the knowledge-siloes and rewire the way a product is designed, sourced, built and consumed in relation to the four Aristotelian causalities. The paper discusses the limitations and potentialities for each causality in relation to a distributed manufacturing paradigm and argues for a new sustainable design concept: The Local Limited Edition. A site-specific product design, realised by brands to enrich brand value on local markets, improve market fit and increase attachment, ultimately improving the products' longevity and value of the products.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies enable the design of new products due to their potentials. The potential of function integration can be extended through a combination of AM with a component integrating technology forming a hybrid integrating additive manufacturing technology (hiAM). With a created development method optimization areas within a product are identified on a functional level using characteristics, structural configurations and integrated functional areas. These are derived analysing examples in literature. The method is applied to a mechanical arm and hand prosthesis.

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is one of the most prevalent cardiac diseases in the world. How might we design patient journeys improving quality of life using wearable cardiac devices for continuous out of hospital monitoring and support? Most of the studies to date have emphasised the technical aspects of implementing such devices with less focus on human factors. As such, remote cardiac monitoring appears to be burdened by poor patient adherence. This research study proposed a journey map based on Roger's technology adoption model to understand the challenges faced by AF patients and non/asymptomatic patients in using wearable devices to monitor their health. Data from semi-structured interviews conducted in Denmark with 12 participants aged 24 to 65 years was used. Interview results show that citizens prefer tracking heart activity only in conjunction with other measures such as steps or sleep and do not feel motivated to track their heart activity on a daily basis. Patients view wearables as a valuable tool to check if their health is all right, although apprehension that devices can cause unnecessary worry can lead to their rejection. Finally, recommendations for the design of patient journeys when using wearables were made.

The importance of forming concepts in one's mind has been argued from various perspectives in design studies. This experimental study examines how the co-creative process affects concept formation considering its depth.

The authors conducted a learning experiment applying three processes; non-interactive (NI), interactive but non-co-creative (NC), and interactive and co-creative processes (C). To evaluate whether and how deep the concept is formed in the examinee's mind, mimetic Japanese words, which contain several different explicit concepts underlying a certain integrated implicit concept, were chosen as learning materials. The examinees without any knowledge about mimetic Japanese words were gathered globally and the experiment was conducted fully online using English. Examinees were tested several times to measure how they had formed these concepts for comparing the processes.

The findings suggest that the co-creative process enhances the depth of concept formation: involvement load and willingness to participate in the co-creative process lead to deeper concept formation.

Gaze sharing is an emerging technology which can enhance human communication and collaboration. As such, it is expected to play an important role in future educational practices. To date, its application was not explored in the context of design education. Additionally, it was mainly implemented in non-immersive environments, which are limited in their potential for engaging learners. Acknowledging the growing interest in immersive learning, as well as the promise made by gaze sharing technology, we strive to develop an immersive gaze sharing environment, to support design education. As a first step, we have implemented and tested an immersive gaze sharing system for supporting design learners. The system was then tested by focusing on a scenario of architectural design, with the aim of collecting valuable user feedback regarding its usability and potential. Our initial user study informs developers of such systems regarding potential issues that may be encountered during deployment in a real-world setting and proposes concrete ways to address these. These insights can help to pave the way for integrating gaze sharing system into design education practices in the near future.

Precise sustainability assessment becomes increasingly important in decision-making, marketing, and regulations. Therefore, reliable and comparable LCA becomes mandatory. Currently, primary data is rarely available due to vastly complex value chains. Secondary data from eco-databases provide a remedy to estimate the sustainability impacts of up- and downstream processes. While giving insights and estimations, this data is seldom fitting exactly to the own processes and lacks comparability. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to close the gap between unreliable secondary data and unavailable primary data. This gap is to be closed by the integration of simulated process data. CAM is a tool during the work preparation to assess the design's manufacturability, decrease set-up times and optimize the NC code. However, integrating DES into LCA is still subject to research and will be discussed in this paper. This paper answers the question of the necessary steps to integrate the simulated production process in an LCA to increase the quality and reliability of sustainability indicators. A method is presented, and the implementation of the steps with the help of a developed assistance system on an example is performed.

The environment for powertrain production system engineers is changing radically. This initial prescriptive study proposes a systems engineering framework based on two previous case studies which are under review for publication concerning design of battery plants. The framework was developed based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 standard using Concept of Operations and Model-Based Systems Engineering in a workshop setting, with a focus on visualisation to understand the practical and emotional needs of the humans in the system. The framework was validated by twelve senior project members.

Previous research has shown the importance of contextual factors for increasing employee innovativeness, but to effectively support innovative behavior, we need to also understand what forms of support are perceived as meaningful by the employees themselves. The current study investigated the experiences of 35 early-career engineers in creating, championing and implementing new ideas at the workplace. They reported relatively few instances of support that had been experienced as helpful, and nearly all of these were related to either managerial or co-worker support. This support ranged from encouragement and positive feedback to tangible help in troubleshooting and finding resources, and, in the case of managers, providing sufficient autonomy and responsibility to enable the interviewees to pursue their ideas. Managerial support was most frequently reported by those working in self-described innovative positions, whereas co-worker support was more commonly reported by those working in self- described innovative environments. Formal processes and incentives were less likely to have been perceived as helpful than informal interactions with managers and co-workers.

In user-centred design, digital human models hold the potential for proactive evaluations of ergonomics or discomfort in terms of a computer aided ergonomics tool. Therefore, models predicting human interaction behaviour, are necessary. In this contribution we present such a model as well as its initial evaluation. The evaluation is performed by applying the interaction model to a specific use case, conducting a comparison with an empirical subject study. The evaluation shows that similar and realistic human behaviour was predicted, which was consistent in terms of whole-body strain.

This research was motivated by the need to design for self-organized and sustained collaborative communities. A collaborative community is defined as a group of people who are bound by a sense of community and fulfil their unmet needs through collaboration (Baek, Meroni, & Manzini, 2015). A community with limited resources and premature organisational structure and therefore experience an unbalanced workload is fragile. If the community fails to distribute workloads fairly within and the commitment of the sacrificing members is exhausted, it is likely to fall apart. Inspired by the self- organization phenomena in nature, we designed a tool that these communities can use to conceive strategies that contribute to autonomy and collaboration. For validation, we applied the tool to an industrial design student club. The results demonstrate that despite the differences between social and ecological systems, there is a potential to learn from nature to design for self-organized collaborative communities with the condition that one has sufficient knowledge about both the references and the design target. We also discuss the problem-solving and learning effects of the tool.

There is a need for responsible engineering design to accommodate the diverse user requirements that come with the global phenomenon of population ageing. Inclusive design can address these diverse requirements through the consideration of a wide diversity of user needs within the design process. However, uptake of inclusive design in industry is limited, with designer awareness of the approach and its associated methods and tools noted as barriers to its uptake. This research aims to understand the current approach to inclusive design education within UK Higher Education Institutions, utilising interviews with design educators and a student survey. The study concluded that teaching of inclusive design varied between institutions with conflicting responses from academics and students relating to the methodologies taught. This study recommends that greater transparency should be encouraged between institutions to encourage the development of a cohesive inclusive design education strategy, in addition to the development of a framework to aid the implementation of appropriate inclusive methods and tools within the design process.

The use of sensor networks (SNs) on the surface or the inside of large-scale components allows the continuous acquisition of data on the applied loads and their structural integrity. A lot of publications on SN's system reliability deal with this topic from a hardware- or a data- and energy-oriented viewpoint. To give an overview on the state of the art in the field of reliability-oriented concept-optimization of SNs, a Systematic Literature Review is conducted. The found literature is used to investigate how different models combine the different viewpoints to analyse the system reliability. By analysing the results regarding the used reliability indicators and methods to assess the system reliability from the different viewpoints, it can be observed that most publications deal with the accuracy, loss and delay of data as well as the energy consumption in SNs. Few publications use common modelling methods like reliability block diagrams or Markov chains with a focus on the hardware reliability. Furthermore, none of the found publications combines the data, hardware and energy perspective and uses them to optimize a SN regarding its reliability from all three viewpoints.

In the course of the IPD International Summer School, two teams addressed the topic of devel-oping an integrated product, with the constraint of it being joyful for the user. One team has chosen an agile development approach whereas the second team approached it in a plan-driven manner. With the starting conditions for both teams being equal, a direct comparison between the agile and plan-driven development approach can be undertaken. The different courses of action are displayed and the different ways on how to approach the topic of achieving joy for the user are outlined. The results as well as the challenges associated with each approach are dis-cussed and an outlook on the transferability to other fields is given.

Boundaries between products and services vanish and companies increasingly offer hybrid solutions known as Product Service Systems (PSS). Thereby, a holistic view that includes both the product and service parts must be taken. This paper presents a discrete-event simulation of a PSS as a method for the specification of the product part. Besides product and service, the application scenario and the decision-making are also modeled. Based on the results for a case study, the customer requirements could be guaranteed as the essential product specifications were optimized to minimize total costs.

The megatrend sustainability will significantly change the future value creation of manufacturing companies. Their current linear value creation models need to change to conform to the requirements of sustainability. To face the challenges the circular economy has emerged as a promising economic model. With the shift from a linear to a circular economy, companies have to adjust their current business models. However, they still lack knowledge and adequate methods to develop circular business models. Hence, the aim of the paper is a circular business model canvas (CBMC) for designing circular businesses. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify significant criteria for circular business models. The criteria were analyzed utilizing a qualitative content analysis to derive the business model elements required for the circular economy. Existing elements from the Business Model Canvas were enriched and five new elements, e.g., reverse logistics, were found. Then, the business model elements were logically arranged resulting in the CBMC. It guides companies to systematically develop business models for the circular economy. The CBMC was evaluated by applying it within a mediumsized company in the electronics sector.

Design principles from the field of design engineering require that a product be designed as unambiguous, safe and simple as possible. Simplicity results on the one hand from an objective product-relevant side, on the other hand from the experience and knowledge of the user. A product that is perceived as simple by one person may seem complicated to another. From this, the questions arise, with which attributes simplicity can be described and how these are to be captured. In this paper, an evaluation system for the subjective attributes of simplicity is created using the fuzzy sets approach.

The industry's interest in Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR) technologies started from the beginning of their appearance in the research world. Over the years, scholars observed ups and downs, to which various factors contributed. In recent years these technologies, now known as eXtended Reality (XR), have returned to fascinate the industrial world, mainly because most of the related enabling technologies have improved to the point of pushing companies to re-invest in them. The introduction of approaches such as the digital twin one and the recent hype on the metaverse is also a push in this direction. A few questions arise: what are the benefits of such technologies in the industry today, and what are the unexplored possibilities? Starting from a systematic literature review and exploring the practical implications of integrating technologies in the industrial field, the paper tries to answer these questions. The paper is not intended as a technological forecast but as a stimulus for future research.