This paper examines the replicability of studies in design research triggered by the replication crisis in psychology. It highlights the importance of replicating studies to ensure the robustness of research results and examines whether the description in a publication is sufficient to replicate. Therefore, the publication of a reference study was analysed and a replication study was conducted. The design of the replication study appears similar to the reference study, but the results differ. Possible reasons for the differences and implications for replication studies are discussed.

The spatial arrangement of objects in residential environments is a crucial indicator of occupant behavior, shedding light on the complex dynamics of their interaction with the interior. This study introduces an object-based graph method for decoding urban home interiors, examining the co-presence of objects to uncover domestic behavioral patterns through indoor imagery analysis. By integrating centrality metrics with objects in graphs, we gain deeper insights into household behaviors, which provide empirical evidence for future interior design.

When designing battery packs, opposing target-conflicts and design goals arise due to the different disciplines involved in the development process. Looking at the available technologies for battery pack design, different solutions can be found on the market. The development of a battery pack for use in various scenarios therefore presents an interesting use case to evaluate product modularisation approaches. Hence, this paper discusses the application of the Integrated PKT Approach based on a fictious use case of a modular battery pack to derive potential starting points for its improvement.

The paper emphasizes the need to consider negative aspects of creativity, especially in design, where it can have significant societal impacts. It calls for a more comprehensive view of creativity that includes both positive and negative effects and proposes a research approach to assess the potential negative consequences of creative work.

Gibson used "affordance" to describe how animals perceive and interact with their environment. Since the term was coined, many studies, both theoretical as well as empirical, have been done. We conducted a review of the 56 most cited works on physical affordances to answer: (1) What methods have been used to study affordances, and how have they changed with time? (2) How has the definition of affordances evolved over time? We went through papers decade-wise and compare their key contributions. Finally, we discuss how the definition and research on affordances has evolved in the last 40 years.

This paper reports the preliminary findings from ongoing research on the potential role of storytelling as an analytical framework in assessing a research project. It is noted that most existing research on storytelling in science is focused on science communication. There is limited research on storytelling as an analytical tool for analyzing and synthesizing research plans and design. This research is based on the premise that the assessment of a research project and design is based on reviewing one or the other form of research communication, whether it is a research plan, a research report, or a presentation. Thus, the assessment is mediated by how well the research plan, proposal, report, or presentation, communicates the research to the reviewer and how well it connects the dots. The reported findings are based on studies with two different storytelling frameworks applied to assess research representations made by doctoral researchers as part of their annual research progress review. The paper reports the details of the research approach, the empirical study, and preliminary findings from the collected data.

Performance assessment plays a crucial role in engineering education. Yet most instructor assessment focuses on student outcomes to analyse achievements. Although there is extensive research analysing student productions, however, few studies have explored assessment from instructor perspectives, especially when reporting their assessment practice. This study examines instructors' assessment of student performance through the lens of course review reports (CRRs). The CRRs were collected from 5 core undergraduate courses submitted for annual review and were related to the mappings of the measurable outcomes to performance indicators, assessment methods, and level of engagement. Regardless of the variability in reporting the student design experience, instructors' assessment and potential gaps, as well as strong existing correlations between some indicators and associated assessment methods, the study showed that the CRR may be a powerful and complementary approach to investigate the complexity of multidisciplinary design and design assessment.

One of the obstacles to the ability of research to make an impact on industry resides on the research process itself. Today, there is a need to accelerate the means for research to support industrial transformation. At the same time, there is the need to maintain scientific rigorousness, which often requires time. To solve this trade-off, this paper evaluates existing research approaches through the lenses of agile development. The analysis is based on a simulation of research process architectures, and on observations made over several research projects with industry. The results of this analysis highlight five light-but-sufficient rules of research project behavior to keep momentum, motivation and trust when doing research with industry. The paper demonstrates the use of these five rules in a “research sprint” conducted iwith two automotive OEMs.

Mindset has been identified as an essential aspect of design and innovation, impacting both behaviours and performance. However, the concept of design mindset is elusive. Often design mindset is used indistinguishably from design behaviour, diminishing the complexity of the mechanisms and cognitive processes underlying design behaviour. As the initial step in researching these mechanisms, we operationalise the concept of design mindset and present the design mindset inventory (D-Mindset0) to measure it. The initial inventory centered around 16 agreement-to-value statements related to design practice. To analyse the inventory, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis based on 473 master students from different engineering disciplines participating in a course on innovation in engineering. The analysis revealed a four-factor structure with 11 final items. The four factors align with the concepts of ‘conversation with the situation,’ ‘iteration,’ ‘co-evolution of problem-solution,’ and ‘imagination.’

Team composition in Project Based Learning is the first task for the class and has a great impact on the learning experience. Anyway, little space is dedicated in literature about team composition, considering their personal inclinations towards design tasks.

For these reasons we propose a tool that aims to map the design skills of students to optimise team composition. The tool is based on a questionnaire grounded in the design theory and aims at measuring the willingness of students at performing certain design tasks. The results of the questionnaires are analysed using Principal Component Analysis to normalise each students’ answers to the whole class, and to show the distribution of students in the space of engineering design skills.

We present the design process of the tool, and a first experimentation on two classes of master's degree students in Management Engineering and Data Science, testing the tool on a total of 72 students. The results are promising and demonstrate the robusteness of the questionnaire and of the analytical method. Also, we propose next steps for our research activity, calling for other researchers to test our method in different contexts.

The extension of the product lifecycle is crucial in the application of Circular Economy principles. However, when Energy Related Products are concerned, managing a durable product does not necessarily mean dealing with sustainable products. This happens because components and/or materials are affected by aging and lead to increased requirement of resources to run (i.e. electricity); there are certain trends that, although distinct from the previous facts, balance the effects of aging, i.e. energy grid mix decarbonization. In the present work an approach that considers both the economic and environmental consequences of durable products is proposed. The Durabot tool has been developed to accomplish the environmental analysis. The work overcomes the main literature criticalities: enables the assessment of environmental consequences of durability ; the evolution of energy grid mix is introduced; the environmental consequences of durable products in different lifecycle scenarios can be assessed during the design phase; therefore, the components to substitute and to make accessible are identified. The tool is intended to be used aiming at design for product lifecycle extension, maintaining both economic and environmental convenience

This paper presents an EEG (Electroencephalography) study that explores the correlation between the EEG variation across design stages and the quality of the design outcomes. The brain activations of 33 volunteers with engineering backgrounds were recorded while performing a design task using a morphological table to develop an amphibious bike. The EEG variations from the analysing/selecting stage to the illustrating stage were analysed based on the EEG frequency band and channel sets. A significant correlation between the detail level of the design outcome and the power variation mode was observed in theta, alpha and gamma bands, each involving different channel sets. Compared to the assessment results from two evaluators, using EEG variations as a proxy of the detail level of the design outcome could reach a maximum accuracy of 0.727, precision of 0.765, and recall of 0.889. These results also provide suggestions on the selection of the frequency bands and channel sets to achieve better prediction performance according to each metric.

Developing digital platform business models, especially in business-to-business (B2B) markets, has a high potential for companies who successfully develop their products in generations. The model of SGE - System Generation Engineering describes the development of mechatronic systems on subsystem level. The authors investigate to what extent a comprehensive and unified methodology can be identified, connecting the research areas of product development and digital B2B platform business models. Therefore, this study conducted a bibliometric analysis of scientific data to identify a research gap and a qualitative literature review to affirm the relevance of future research in this research area. The results show a gap between the research areas of digital B2B platform business models and product development. Essentially, several renowned platform researchers suggested performing future research with a methodology that fulfils the following purposes: (1) improve the general understanding of digital platforms, (2) understand their success factors and development, and (3) deal with challenges (e.g., monetization) and loss of valued personal relations in B2B markets through digitization.

The application of agile development methods in response to increasing market dynamics and product complexity is a key lever in the automotive industry. Agile methods originally come from the software industry and enable fast, flexible and customer-oriented product development. These methods are also increasingly being used in hardware development. However, the evaluation of the benefits of agile methods in the context of automotive development has been primarily subjective. The publication aims to present a first data-based approach to objectify the benefits of agile methods in automotive development by highlighting the effects in the quality of collaboration within teams. A standardised procedure is therefore designed and presented. On the one hand, a model for measuring the agile maturity of teams is described. On the other hand, the quality of collaboration within a team is examined in different aspects using standardised key performance indicators. Based on the proposed procedure, a strong positive correlation was found between the considered key performance indicators of the quality of collaboration and the agile maturity of the development teams within the investigated organisation.

use-case scenarios, including homes, hospitals, workplaces, and recreation. Though the area of Social Robotics has gained traction in recent years, the majority of the studies so far have studied single-human and single-robot interaction. In comparison, Social Robots are increasingly being placed in human teams, likely affecting team dynamics. On the other hand, Engineering teams work together to deliver outstanding results and the processes in these teams are social. We propose that Social robot can be added to engineering human team to enhance team cohesion and performance. Therefore, this paper presents a preliminary framework towards developing a conceptual framework to study team cohesion in Human-Robot Teams (HRTs) in engineering context, looks at different roles of social robot and how the responses, behaviours, emotions of social robots shape outcomes in the engineering team. The research specifically focuses on team cohesion because team cohesion is reportedly one of the most critical concepts in team dynamics. The paper outlines the research objectives, framework and concept workflow.

The health sector in the humanitarian context is currently experiencing great pressure in delivering adequate care, due to a number of increasing emerging diseases. The World Health Organization (2022) reports that: '…since 2011, there have been more than 1200 outbreaks of epidemic-prone diseases in 188 countries around the world, causing widespread death and suffering…’. A key factor that can contribute to ensure high quality care is the possibility to rely on adequate infrastructure and products. This paper presents the interdisciplinary methodology deployed to design and develop an innovative infectious diseases treatment module that could be deployed and utilised in the very first phases of health emergencies. The methodology proposed is organised around a three-level approach to ensure both core disciplinary solidity, and holistic understanding of the complexity of the challenge. The contribution of this work is the definition of key aspects in the proposed methodology that can help overcome difficulties in delivering high quality interdisciplinary research and work, as well as highlighting behavioural patterns that can ensure successful delivery of innovative products and facilities for the humanitarian health sector.

Complex global problems, such as sustainable crop production, where conventional products do not fully solve the problem due to their low efficacy and negative environmental impact, require rationally designed products. Generally, these products are based on efficient technologies and stimuli-responsive and high-performance materials. Considering the product design approach with a science-based approach such as drug development through QbD. We propose to merge the most relevant elements of these approaches in an integrated design methodology. Regarding the conceptual analysis, we propose two phases: initially, an early phase with conceptual solutions, followed by an advanced phase based on QbD elements to define the research hypothesis. Hence, optimal product conditions defined in the design space must comply with the required performance of the stimuli-responsive product. So, with this proposed integration we pretend to potentialize and strengthen the established tools for product design, achieving an advanced and robust design methodology.

System maps are established tools in design practice and education as well as non-design research, both as a process and an outcome of systemic analysis and synthesis. Applying causal loop diagrams (CLD's) in (systemic) design research could be of great value to tackle the growing societal complexity. At this moment there is, however, no clear research protocol to include the rich data necessary for systemic research and ensure a scientifically valid system map in the context of design research. In this paper, we propose a protocol using CLD's as a research method and outcome in design-inclusive research. The protocol synthesises rich data from qualitative research in a way that the representation yields higher validity compared to the regular approach to systems mapping, using a process of reflection and iteration on boundary setting. An iterative process of qualitative research methods with lean validation methods was used to come to a conceptual proposal. The protocol can support systemic design researchers and practitioners to include a scientifically grounded CLD in the explorative research actions phase, thus bridging the research towards a phase of creative design actions.

The Life Cycle Assessment is a well-stated methodology whose application has recently spread over a multitude of sectors. Thus the need for very accurate and reliable analysis. The present work investigates how to achieve reliable and faithful results while still maintaining a micro-systemic approach and how to handle the evolution of the real cases through commercial solutions available. The works present an innovative dynamic approach that aims at filling the discrepancy between the attributional Life Cycle Assessment which is focused on the product at the point to appear short-sighted and isolated from the surrounding evolving system and the consequential, which is willing to include the consequences of the evolution of the surrounding system, with increased complexity. The approach is applied to the case of a domestic refrigerator; the application reveals a discrepancy of 16% between the results of the dynamic and attributional analysis and registered doubled environmental impacts than the consequential, carried out with the support of commercial datasets. The approach respects the 5 main criteria for methods in environmental systems analysis, namely feasibility, accuracy, easiness in communication, inspiration, robustness.

Prior to wide adoption, a product must find social approval, which is especially true for near-body products as they are considered part of the human body. Based on a theoretical foundation, this study aims to provide an overview of methods to assess natural behaviour towards users of visible near-body products in uncontrolled environments, i.e. in the wild. Approaching the matter from a product design perspective, this article is primarily intended for designers of near-body products who wish to gain insights into the social behaviour of people towards users wearing their design proposals.