Over years of practice, industrial designers have developed three steps that always lead to a design solution: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Usually, the result is a product, but sometimes it is a demonstrator, a versatile concept, combining design, engineering, and art. However, designers usually are not aware of this notion. But if the result is different, how does it affect the design process? The analysis of the contextual inquiry study of two demonstrators shows that the transformation should happen during the ideation phase, where abstract concept becomes a story.

Digital radar waveforms such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) often have the disadvantage that they require high sampling rates if fine range resolutions have to be achieved. The frequency comb OFDM radar scheme offers a possibility to overcome this drawback and to improve the range resolution without increasing the sampling rate. Simultaneously, the high unambiguous velocity, which is one of the advantages of digital radar waveforms, is retained and due to the simple generation of orthogonal transmit signals, it is well suited for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) applications. To prove all these features of the frequency comb OFDM radar scheme, a suitable 4 × 4 MIMO demonstrator including frequency comb generation as well as up- and downconversion with these combs has been set up. Its functionality has been validated with real measurements in an anechoic chamber in conjunction with a radar target simulator to emulate very high velocities.

This paper highlights a recently identified by the community perspective of design research, so far described as “inaccessible”, discusses the potential of “designerly” way of approaching it in order to let designers excavate tacit knowledge from their own finished projects. We frame demonstrators as a category of design outcomes that can be a great source of such knowledge. Skills of empathy and intuition are called crucial for researchers to position themselves inside the design system looking inwards.

It is known that pigs can acquire flavour preferences by brief social interactions with conspecifics that previously consumed a flavoured solid feed. However, there is no information about whether a flavoured solution could support flavour preferences through social transmission. Ninety-six pigs (49 days old) were housed in 12 pens (8 pigs/pen). Four animals per pen were randomly selected to act as observers and four as demonstrators. Demonstrator animals were temporarily moved to an empty pen where a protein solution was offered (porcine digestive peptides (PDPs), 4% weight/volume) with the addition of 0.075% aniseed (six pens) or garlic (six pens) powdered artificial flavours for 30 min. Afterwards, demonstrators were returned to interact with observer animals for 30 min. A choice test (30 min) between aniseed and garlic PDP was performed for each observer group after the interaction. Observers showed a higher intake of solutions previously consumed by their demonstrator conspecifics (648 v. 468 ml; SEM 61.36, P < 0.05). As with flavoured solid feeds, protein solutions containing artificial flavours can create preferences in pigs for those flavours through social transmission from conspecifics.