Scenario planning is often used in design practice to foster futures thinking, reduce uncertainties and improve decision-making. Scenarios are especially relevant for innovation activities in manufacturing companies, such as technology development, a particularly uncertain process where many trade-offs occur. This study is, to the authors knowledge, the first to empirically measure the effect of scenarios in decision-making quality, in the context of technology development. In a quasi-experiment, engineers from a manufacturing company and university students were independently asked to analyse a trade-off situation between environmental and financial aspects of a technology concept, with and without scenarios. The quality of decision-making quality for control and experiment groups was measured through a standardized questionnaire. The results show that scenarios had a positive impact in 6 of the 7 quality decision-making practices (QMDP), although the effect size is small. The results suggest that both expert and novice designers may benefit from using scenario planning when performing early-stage design activities by having awareness of the decision context, a more structured decision process, and clearer decision criteria.

Product architecture decisions are made early in the product development process and have far-reaching effects. Unless anticipated through experience or intuition, many of these effects may not be apparent until much later in the development process, making changes to the architecture costly in time, effort, and resources. Many researchers through the years have studied various elements of product architecture and their effects. By aggregating observations on the effects of architecture strategies from a selection of the literature on the topic and storing them in a systematic data set, this information can be recalled in a matrix structure which allows for the identification, comparison and evaluation, and then selection of the most desirable product architecture strategies before expending resources along any development path. This paper introduces this matrix, referred to as the Product Architecture Strategy and Effect (PASE) Matrix, how to construct one, and a demonstration of its use.

Autonomous vehicles for the last mile are a promising use case for advancing autonomous driving in real-world traffic. For this purpose, traditional car manufacturers and newcomer companies develop a new vehicle concept: the autonomous shuttle. During the development, components from the automation domain, such as the sensors, must be placed and integrated into the vehicle body. The trade-offs between the functional performance of the perception and the exterior design must be evaluated early in the design process. For this purpose, a model of the vehicle exterior is needed. In this contribution, we present a method for parametric modeling of the vehicle exterior of autonomous shuttles. We define 17 input parameters and use computer-aided design to create a virtual model of the body and the wheelhouses. In the results, we validate our method by ensuring that existing shuttles can be modeled with our approach and also analyze the limitations. The model supports decision-making in the early design phase by enabling quick iterations between sensor placement and exterior design.

Real vehicle usage rarely matches the predictions made during early phases of vehicle development and sales processes at commercial road vehicle manufacturers. The automotive industry needs multidisciplinary vehicle design methods to predict real-world vehicle operations by considering the vehicle level and the transport system level simultaneously, in a more holistic approach. The aim of this study was to analyse how realistic vehicle usage of driverless multipurpose vehicles can be modelled in Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) by conducting a systematic literature review. We found that real vehicle usage modelling of driverless multipurpose vehicles in VRPs mainly depended on the following elements: VRP variant, energy consumption model, energy consumption rate class, number of vehicle-specific design variables and transport system-level factors. Furthermore, we identified in the literature five classes of energy consumption rate edge behaviour in VRPs. These findings can support decision-making in the modelling process to select the most suitable combination of elements, and their level of detail for the overall modelling aim and purpose.

While a significant amount of research has documented the importance of design artefacts in design communication, relatively little work has investigated the effect of design artefact quality on the development of a shared understanding between designers. In the current work we focus specifically on sketch quality and the effect of sketch quality on the shared understanding of design dyads. A controlled study with 22 design dyads (44 designers) was conducted to understand the relationship between sketch quality and shared understanding. Results suggest that design artefact quality, measured by sketch understandability, does not predict the shared understanding of a design concept. Our findings hold implications for the fundamental ways in which we evaluate sketch quality and the importance of artefact fidelity for communicative acts.

The requirements space is increasing due to non-functional areas such as security, resilience and sustainability gaining in importance. This creates a complex and dynamic space which makes it hard for engineers to take good data driven design decisions. Increasing the quality of design decisions allows to better set up development projects and develop more successful products and services. The design can most heavily be influenced in the early design phases, where design flexibility is high and resource commitment is low. Unfortunately, the system knowledge is also low in early phases. The Engineering Graph is a concept that connects data from different internal and external sources. It allows to connect product data stored in Product Lifecycle Management systems with system models and also add external sources from the Wikimedia Knowledge Graph, World Health Organization and World Bank. This interconnected data allows the support of engineers in managing the complex and dynamic requirement space and provide high system knowledge in the early design phases to support design decisions.

Decisions made in the concept generation phase have a significant effect on the product. While product- related risks typically can be considered in the early stages of design, risks such as supply chain and manufacturing methods are rarely easy to account for in early phases. This is because the currently available methods require mature data, which may not be available during concept generation. In this paper, we propose an approach to address this. First, the product and the non-product (manufacturing and/or supply chain) attributes are modelled using the enhanced function means (EF-M) modelling method. The EF-M method provides the opportunity to model alternative solutions-set for functions. Dependencies are then mapped within the product and the manufacturing models, and also in between them. An automatic combinatorial method of concept generation is employed where each generated instance is a design concept-manufacturing method pair. A risk propagation algorithm is then used to assess the risks of all the generated alternatives.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) are seen as key enablers of circularity. However, better sustainability performance of PSS when compared to transactional business models is not given and it must be carefully considered in the design process. The early-stage PSS design is considered crucial because it determines most of the future offerings' impact. Nevertheless, manufacturing companies struggle with PSS design and often rely on ad hoc intuitive approaches with low success rates. Current PSS design approaches have been dispersed in literature until a recent systematic literature review by the authors proposed a comprehensive generic process model to enable the inclusion of sustainability considerations in the early stages. This paper takes the generic process model as a starting point and instantiates it to the context of two manufacturing companies, seeking to (i) explore the instantiation process from a generic to company-specific process models to support manufacturing companies; and (ii) reflect upon and prepare an evaluation of the generic process model concerning eight predefined criteria. The study reveals a number of potential areas for improving both generic and instantiated process models.

The breadth of media and approaches used when prototyping are vast, with each holding inherent properties that vary their suitability for a given prototyping activity.

While several have established classifications of types and purposes of prototypes, there is little by way of guidance for designers on how select and strategise prototyping given their activity needs, or how the prototype chosen may influence their process, success or efficiency.

This paper presents nine affordances of prototypes derived from literature, together characterising the properties of prototyping media or approaches that affect their suitability across prototyping activities.

The affordances are illustrated through application to physical and digital classes of prototypes and four real prototype cases, showing descriptive capability, inherent differences between the media, and enabling direct and consistent comparison.

By mapping affordances across many media and approaches, this work enables better method selection to align with activity needs, better description and comparison of media and approaches, and the ability the broadly interrogate and direct future development of prototyping technologies.

This paper present a pedagogical tool to address a lack of creative approach in traditional education on embedded sensors. The tool is built in a systematic way from the data sheet information of a large number of different sensors. The tool presents the main monitoring capabilities of embedded sensors on cards to assist students in the creative stages of product design. An experiment was conducted to test its educational potential with 30 Masters students in product design. The statistical analysis on the experiment data indicate that the tool enables the improvement of knowledge on embedded sensors, with a more significant gain in advanced thinking skills. Finally, the tool is easy to implement in product design education and accessible to a wide range of students.

What do common devices such as smartphones, CD’s and solar panels all have in common? They are all examples of innovative technology that is still limited to flat, rigid geometries. This is primarily due to the limitations of the manufacturing processes used to create components within these devices, key among them the thin polymer films produced through spin coating.

Spin coating is a technique used due to its ability to effectively create uniform films on the scale of micro or nanometres. However, it relies on a planar substrate to produce uniform layers, thus restricting the design of components manufactured using this process to simple, flat objects. As the requirement for curved device geometries expands, complex alternative fabrication methods are being implemented in industry.

For spin coating to remain relevant, a viable process for controlling the fluid flow over curved surfaces must be developed. This research investigates the hypothesis that coating distributions can be controlled through optimized rotation of a curved substrate. Where a multi-axis rotational manipulator and novel characterization system have been developed to investigate the fabrication of curved devices using the improved spin coating technique.

To enable the emergence of new and efficient vehicle design from the transport system perspective, a formulation of a multifunctional vehicle-transport design optimisation problem is presented. System- wide measures of transportation and vehicle efficiency measures are conceptually considered in an integrative design approach to drive the transport solutions towards more resource-efficient and eventually more sustainable solutions. Considered efficiency measures associated with the system-wide aspect are namely, productivity and service efficiency, and measures associated with vehicle attributes are namely mass and shape efficiency. The conflicting nature of these measures is balanced using optimisation methodologies through multiple transportation scenarios with varying transport demand and deterministic drive cycles. The obtained optimisation results demonstrated that there is a strong interconnectivity between the vehicle's overall configuration and transportation aspects. Thus, conceptually demonstrating how the inclusion of various transport-vehicle efficiency measures simultaneously in an integrative design approach during the early vehicle design may yield a more efficient and better overall system performance.

The early-stage engineering design activities include conceptualising, identifying, and solving an engineering design problem. These activities are essential and standard roles of a design engineer. However, they seem to lack comprehensive practice within the engineering design community. In this study, semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 participants having engineering design backgrounds are presented. The aim of the interviews is to investigate the awareness and practice of the early stage engineering design activities. The participants interviewed practice in countries including France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Contrary to standard expectations, the results of the interviews show that the early-stage engineering design activities are not comprehensively practised. The results suggest that design engineers' crucial role in identifying unknown problems lacks practice. Also, the data from the interviews provide empirical evidence on the determinants for the lack of comprehensive practice of early-stage engineering design activities. Recommendations on possible interventions to support the practice are presented to expedite innovations and inventions.

Academic institutions are increasingly required to prepare future practitioners to face complex sustainability challenges. The need to foster the development of different skills, attitudes, and multidisciplinary collaboration raised the interest in alternative learning approaches. Game-based learning can be a tool to achieve a variety of desirable learning outcomes, including sustainability and collaborative attitudes change. We present a pilot study investigating the potential of a board game on sustainability risks and opportunities in product development and life cycle, performing a test with different student audiences. The paper discusses our results of the experiment, including a survey following the game, qualitative analysis of students' feedback, and observations during the game sessions. Additionally, we relate insights from students' reflections to CDIO learning objectives. We then illustrate lessons learned and the potential advantages of using the game compared to other teaching approaches and as a complementary tool. Finally, we propose future directions and recommendations for the use of the board game and game-based learning in sustainability education with different student audiences.

The availability of digital data in the fourth industrial revolution brings different trends with new opportunities and challenges for the engineering design community. As an opportunity, these trends would impact engineering design. However, the challenge is finding applications for these trends in engineering design. Crowdsourcing is one of the trends inspired by digital data. It is outsourcing an individually performed task to be mass-performed. This paper explores the application of crowdsourcing in identifying engineering design problems. Identifying an engineering design problem is an aspect of engineering design considered challenging but necessary for inventions. Secondary data from 63 invention-related cases and an interview with a renowned UK inventor are presented. The data contains scenarios on how the engineering design problems solved to qualify for a UK patent grant or application are identified. Lessons from the case studies are presented and discussed, especially regarding crowdsourcing engineering design problems. These seem to be promising ways of supporting the identification of new engineering design problems with inventive benefits once solved.

New trends and technologies in product creation increase complexity, but at the same time create new potentials such as efficiency rise in task processing by Artificial Intelligence. Established models in the early phase of product creation such as the W-model or the Aachener Innovation Management model, do not fully exploit these new potentials in the field of strategic product planning and innovation management (SPPIM). For this reason, existing models are analysed in SPPIM in order to derive a requirements profile consisting of potentials and goals for a new model. A new model in SPPIM lays the foundation to support companies in enabling a more efficient task fulfilment by taking advantage of new technologies and trends. To guide the development of advanced SPPIM models, the derived potentials and goals are applied to the guideline VDI 2220:1980.

The design of Product-Service Systems (PSS) is challenging due to the inherent complexities and the associated uncertainties. This challenge aggravates when the PSS being considered has a longer lifespan, is expected to encounter a dynamic context, and integrates many novel technologies. From systems engineering literature, one of the measures for mitigating the risks associated with the uncertainties is incorporating means in the system to change internally as a response to change externally. Such systems are referred to as value-robust systems, and their development largely relies on Tradespace exploration and synthesis. Tradespace exploration and synthesis can be challenging and a time-consuming task due to dimensionality. In this light, this paper aims to present an approach that enables the population of the Tradespace and then, supports the synthesis of such a Tradespace using a clustering algorithm for support changeability quantification in PSS. The proposed method is also implemented on a demonstrative case from the construction machinery industry.

Adaptive façades (AF) present a promising approach to reduce environmental impacts in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction sector. However, the automatization of the façade produces new challenges as the complexity of the system increases. To support the early phase of interdisciplinary development, solution collections such as databases are helpful. Previous research identified that existing solution collections of AF do not meet the requirements that such a method demands. In the effort to develop an optimized database, this paper investigates how the state of the art can be structured in terms of content in order to present it in the database. Here, a set of design parameters is developed based on identified requirements and on the main characteristics of AF that were previously elaborated. This set offers a comprehensive perspective on the previously realized functions and mechanisms of AF and can also contribute to finding creative solutions in the form of new concepts by combining the design parameters in new ways. Finally, 40 case studies of previously implemented adaptive façades are used to evaluate the set of design parameters.

The digitalization trend is finding its way more and more into product development, resulting in new frameworks to enhance product engineering. An integral element is the application of new techniques to existing data, which offers an enormous potential for time and cost savings, because duplicate work in product design and subsequent steps is avoided. The reduction of costs can be further increased through the application as early as possible in the product development process. One solution is outlined in this publication, where the source of available data is principle sketches from engineering design. These represent the basic solution for technical products in a simplified way and are often deployed in the early stages of the development process. This representation enables not only a search of similar sketches but also other fields of interest such as product optimization or the search of CAD-geometries. To utilize this data in a practical way, a procedure is presented which recognizes the symbols of the sketches and subsequently converts them into graphs. An exemplary dataset from different gearbox layouts is used to present the application opportunities by performing similarity searches with multiple input formats.

Stakeholder perspective taking is a critical skill in early-stage problem exploration and framing. We examined stakeholder perspective taking within an early-stage design team of engineers at NASA to begin to understand in what ways and under what conditions designers adopt stakeholder perspectives in the context of professional engineering organizations. Our findings identify a spectrum of perspective taking during problem framing deliberations that ranges from (1) fully taking the stakeholder's point of view (POV), (2) interpreting the stakeholder's POV using the designer's POV, (3) implanting the stakeholder's POV into the designer's POV, to (4) fully taking the designer's own POV. We also identify and describe conditions that appeared to encourage or hinder perspective taking in this setting. These findings are significant because they suggest ways to gauge and encourage the skill of stakeholder perspective taking among professional engineers working on real-world design challenges with societal implications.