Based on 4 codesign cases and 15 designer interviews, this article presents how territorial design serves as a catalyst for shared values in community living. Examining user experience and design goals, it reveals how ethological and political values shape territories and the design process. Participants explore new work methodologies, redefine collective activities and navigate in tensions, power issues and political dimensions. The codesign space transforms political interactions, shifting from controversy to conception, offering a new experience and perspective on territorial discussions.

Innovation-driven firms must adopt an open design strategy for competitiveness. Co-design games are recommended to foster an open, equal, and collaborative culture. However, most studies focus on the West. East-Asian countries, notably China, face unique challenges due to cultural disparities and inertia. This paper explores design games in the Chinese context through a case study with traditional workshops, revealing participants' perspectives and the potential impact on cultural inertia.

Design is associated with many benefits for businesses, ranging from successful products and brands to greater economic success. However, companies still have difficulties in unlocking the potential of design. This publication develops a literature-based conceptual model that outlines necessary organizational factors and their interrelation to create an environment for design and designers to thrive. At the same time, it explains why companies are having difficulties in leveraging the benefits of design. Further research directions are derived to strengthen the role of design and designers.

This research explores the impact of Design Thinking (DT) on Organizational Behaviour, explicitly focusing on individual employees, the micro-level of the organization. The research runs a single-case study within an Italian bank adopting DT through its HR department. The study proposes a model illustrating how DT adoption influences specific individual behavioral constructs: motivations, attitudes, capabilities, and creative behaviors. The study finds that fostering confidence in the creative process enhances human engagement and proactivity.

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.

The task of developing “concepts” is common in all fields of engineering, especially in the early phases of product development. However, an in-depth literature analysis showed that authors - often depending on different contexts in design research, education, and industry - define the term “concept” in differing ways. The aspect of reference-based development is rarely addressed in existing definitions. This indicates that there is a need for an updated and concise concept definition. In this paper, the authors propose a new definition of the term “system concept” within the context of SGE - System Generation Engineering that incorporates the findings from the literature analysis. The definition was reflected on in two case-studies. The first one contained the system concept for automotive display and operating systems, the second one the system concept for a kinesthetic-haptic VR interface. The proposed definition contains the relevant characteristics identified from the literature review and supports both current activity-based process models and reference-based development, as practical application has shown.

Research on partly configurable products is emerging. Key concepts of these types of products have been scarcely synthetized, as definitions of partly configurable products in high-variety, low-volume industrial context are limited. These products incorporate modular and integral designs, which calls for an overview on the relations of key concepts defining them. The problem is approached through an exploratory literature review, which allowed an overview of the key concepts over product modularity and partly configurable products. Those were synthetized further define partly configurable products. As a result, four types of partly configurable products are given. This review supports vantage over the key concepts and their relations for reuse with partly configurable products in academia. For practitioners the presented attributes and given examples support in understanding of concepts and their relations with partly configurable products.

Industrial practice shows that products are developed in generations. Innovation success with complex technical systems can only be achieved economically by using existing solutions as references. These references come from predecessors, competitors, and even industry-external sources. The model of SGE – System Generation Engineering describes these relationships. The iPhone is often used as an example of an innovative product developed in generations. Multiple studies have examined the iPhone. However, none of these studies systematically considers the influence of the product context on references and variations. In this contribution, an evolutionary descriptive model based on the model of SGE is applied to 15 iPhone product generations. The central result is an overview of the variation shares over the generations and the relationships between context factors, reference-based variation activities, and innovation success and hypotheses for causalities. This is one of a series of case studies to investigate these causalities. The study showed how the iPhone remained successful in its context: not through a high new development share, but through strategically placed variations and the use of references from various sources.

As the demands for new complex products/services increase, leading to strict constraints on budget and time-to-market, it is hard to learn from experience and improve practice. Improvement can be exercised in all aspects contributing to project management: the skill set of project personnel, the project structure, and the development process. People are the key asset of the project. Identifying the key participants in a project whose role is influential is important for improving the project's success. These people can receive support, remove their burdens, make sure their communication channels work well, etc. This paper offers a multilayer network-based method to examine an actor's influence in a project while combining two additional organizational key aspects: products and processes. Considering these three aspects together allows for a more informed evaluation of the actors' influence on the project. Using the insight from graph theory, we gain indicators related to each network actor. The influence of the actors in a multidimensional network makes it possible to present a clearer picture to decision-makers in the organization to make better decisions related to increasing the effectiveness of the development project.

The current regulatory framework for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) is changing and now requires manufacturers to disclose the environmental performance of their products. This means that manufacturers must perform a life cycle analysis (LCA) on their entire range of products. An LCA is a recognized and standardized methodology for assessing the environmental impact of activities. However, communicating this information to consumers is challenging because it can be complicated.

Despite this challenge, there is currently no common standard for communicating environmental information to consumers. The objective of this study is to explore the best practices for conveying environmental information. To achive this, a review of current environmental labeling approaches and recommendations available in the literature is conducted. Additionally, consumer requirements are collected and analyzed through a questionnaire that employs both quantitative and qualitative methods. The information collected is then used to develop the best practices for implementing environmental labeling for EEE.

Data-driven design is expected to change design processes and organizations in significant ways. What actions should design managers take to ensure the best possible outcomes in this new data-driven design environment? This paper employs an interdisciplinary literature survey to distill key impacts that data-driven design may have on designers, design teams, organizations and product users. Findings reveal that designers may need a broader set of skills to be successful. For data-driven design to be most effective, design managers will be challenged with many integration tasks, including the integration of AI-based tools into design teams, the closer integration of interdisciplinary teams, the integration of qualitative design thinking methods with new data-driven design paradigms, and the integration of data and algorithms into traditional human-centred design practice, in an effort to overcome cognitive limitations and augment human skill. This paper identifies gaps in the literature at the intersection of data-driven design and design management, design thinking, and systems thinking.

A multi-domain Matrix (MDM) is used to identify and analyse rework loops within the Building Design (BD) process caused by building regulations. To model this process, we used information from official documents, plans of work, email archives, and anecdotal evidence as a case study. Findings reveal that MDM can identify the rework loops caused by building regulations, this information forms the basis to improve current BD processes. The complexity of the rework loop including the processes, people and, deliverables involved in the rework loop is also identified. Further analysis can also use the MDM to estimate the costs incurred with each rework cycle. This MDM can also identify rework loops in other engineering design processes due to design changes.

This study is part of a PhD project exploring engineering productivity in the construction industry using DRM. The results present an MDM that provides situation-specific insight, offering areas of process improvement, and support through engineering productivity measurement. This is one of the few studies that models rework loops in the BD process caused by regulations.

Environmental sustainability represents an unavoidable design driver. The consciousness of the importance of tackle the topic of environmental sustainability since the first stages of the product lifecycle is slowly spreading through enterprises. However, although they reach this grade of awareness, it is hard to introduce additional considerations to the traditional drivers of functionality, manufacturability, assembly, cost, etc. Therefore, it is crucial to identify methods and tools to support companies in efficiently integrating environmental sustainability issues in their design process. This paper proposes an approach to identify the inputs, functionality and outputs suitable to each industrial reality. Its core is the eco-design tool matrix, that estimates the tool implementation time and suggests proper outputs; from this the necessary inputs and functional blocks are derived. The approach is applied to the cases of two Italian industries, very different one another. This proves the wide applicability of the approach. The definition of a validation procedure represents the next steps to identify the benefits of the approach.

The problem of plastic waste in research laboratories is a significant one, with an estimated 5.5 million tonnes generated annually worldwide. Reusable labware has the potential to reduce this waste significantly, but the design of such products must take into account quality assurance to guarantee the accuracy of experiments. Insights were gathered through the generation of an overview of the available techniques for verifying labware after use and decontamination. As during different design cycles verification of prototypes is needed, these techniques were evaluated and translated to be applicable in the specific context of a design lab. Therefore, this study presents a protocol which can be used as a verification tool while designing safe, reusable labware for chemical laboratories. This protocol consists of four different steps: (i) visual inspection, (ii) mass & size comparison, (iii) leak test, and (iv) chemical stability test.

Technological life cycles are driven by the changes in the shape and level of innovation, yet innovation rate is not directly observable and is difficult to trace. Innovation measured by patent-citation networks (PCN) cannot be estimated solely by quantity, whereas quality-adjusted quantity measurements are still prone to bias. Our paper complement PCN data analysis with an agent-based simulation (ABS) on networks to uncover the latent innovation that automatically accounts for the quality and quantity components instead of decoupling them. We build dynamic PCN for radio frequency 'CMOS' technology and subsequently develop ABS to replicate underlying innovation network formation. Comparing the real and synthetic data, we isolate latent innovation rate in PCN and by mapping pivotal patent assignees — innovators, we calculate the diversity of innovators in the technology market. Identifying innovation patterns, we show that, early on, innovation structures are less diverse and exploratory, but this grows and matures eventually until value creation become an expensive endeavor. Contrary to what is observed, we show how the abundance that appears are less significant publications mostly driven by exploitation in the technology market.

This study considers the 'three sub-abilities' that constitute the abstraction ability and focuses on drawing as an education for acquiring them. Focusing on the similarity between the process of drawing and the semiotic triangle, elucidating their relationship with the sub-abilities that constitute the abstraction ability, it devises a drawing education programme that focuses on 'observing' rather than 'drawing'. The drawing education programme formulated is implemented on 177 students, and the result is determined using tests that enable objective evaluation to prove the effectiveness of the program in helping students acquire the 'three sub-abilities' that constitute the abstraction ability.

The educational programme proposed in this research, which focuses on the universality of the effects of learning drawing, as well as the quantitative criteria for evaluating it, will contribute to familiarize practical education in the field of art to the general public.

Successful research and development requires interdisciplinary collaboration, often across organisational boundaries and for extended timeframes, such as in innovation networks or ecosystems. Open Organisation (OO) research can support collaboration and knowledge exchange in such situations. It builds on established concepts of Open Innovation through enhancing the exchange of knowledge by the exchange of humans. This paper contributes to OO research by presenting an OO lifecycle framework, which analyses evolving organisational and collaboration characteristics and resulting management needs.

In objected-oriented design, "smells" are symptoms of code violating design principles. When a deadline is looming, decisions can affect the long-term quality of a code or CAD. Given this and the similarities between object-oriented code and CAD models, this paper introduces a set of CAD smells. These smells are derived from a top-down review of potential CAD smells mapped against the reported code smells that violate abstraction, modularity, encapsulation, and hierarchy principles. This list was further reviewed considering CAD systems and specific examples (some illustrated in the paper).

This work studies the perception of the impacts of AI and human process managers during a complex design task. Although performance and perceptions by teams that are AI- versus human-managed are similar, we show that how team members discern the identity of their process manager (human/AI), impacts their perceptions. They discern the interventions as significantly more helpful and manager sensitive to the needs of the team, if they believe to be managed by a human. Further results provide deeper insights into automating real-time process management and the efficacy of AI to fill that role.

There has been a growing body of literature and use cases for set-based design since its introduction in the 80s. Few studies or use cases involve highly complex systems, though, except for the hallmark work regarding Toyota in the late 90s. Over the last three years, the US Navy used set-based methods to design a complex system of systems: a warship. Their experience provides insight into the scalability of the method and design management considerations relevant to the start of similar projects.