As concerns about climate change and biodiversity loss intensify, circular economy strategies are crucial for decoupling economic growth from resource depletion. Yet, the consumer behavioural dimension including returning, repairing, and accepting refurbished products remains underexplored, in particular in the bicycle industry. By conducting a survey of bicycle users, this study finds a strong willingness to engage in these slow-the-loop practices, driven by cost savings, convenience, and trust, but hindered by knowledge gaps and quality concerns, implying recommendations for manufacturers.

This paper evaluates the criticality assessment within the Criticality-Based Planning of Prototype Sequences method. Two independent application studies investigate whether the existing scale definitions for novelty, technical difficulty and importance are sufficient for systematic and context-independent use. The results show that operationalised criteria and clearer evaluator guidance significantly improve consistency, reproducibility and applicability across different development projects.

Digital news interfaces often prioritise speed and visual intensity, overlooking the material conditions through which information is experienced. This paper investigates how a text-only news device influences perceptual clarity, attention, and emotional tone in everyday use. Using a research-through-design approach with a deployed design probe, findings reveal material and formal qualities shape news engagement, introducing the concept of “minimal media” and informing the design of calmer information devices.

This study presents the “P-Heroes”, a superhero family designed through a Research through Design process to support children with urinary incontinence. Inspired by children’s own superhero drawings, expert input, and validation sessions with children, the design evolved through iterative prototyping. Each hero embodies traits such as persistence, comfort, emotional regulation, resilience and structure. Together, the “P-Heroes” reflect the diversity of children’s journeys toward continence and serve as a playful conversation starter to help them express their needs and experiences more openly.

This study systematically characterizes product development processes (PDPs) in hardware-oriented SMEs. A PRISMA-based literature review identifies twelve empirical case studies and eight development frameworks. The analysis derives key PDP influence factors, synthesizes stage-wise SME PDP activities, and consolidates characteristic challenges. A gap analysis reveals the absence of SME-specific PDP development frameworks and missing integration with technology management. The results establish a structured empirical basis for future research.

Individualisation in military equipment aims to improve performance by aligning design with soldier-specific needs. Existing DfAM methodologies lack structured integration of user variability and iterative evaluation in defence contexts. This study develops an iterative DfAM process linking anthropometric input, additive strategy, constraints, and performance assessment. Demonstrated through a helmet liner case, three iterations addressed geometry, manufacturability, and impact-response behaviour within regulatory limits.

First year students have heterogeneous prerequisites for acquiring competences in engineering design education caused by varying school education or vocational training. Individual support is challenging in large groups and frontal lectures. An approach for individualized support is adaptive e-learning. This paper analyses the impact of offering an adaptive e-learning environment for engineering design education (AdE-Le). Analysis results for data of the same course from three different years give insights into acceptance and impact of using AdE-Le on acquiring professional competencies.

The nutrition transition model examines the impact of industrialization and economic development on standards of living through dietary changes. The changes in dietary structure over the last two centuries have been determined. These changes consist of an overall increase in calorie and protein intake and a shift from a diet of predominantly cereals to one with animal-based products. The literature considers that the growth in income is the principal factor explaining dietary change. Although it has also highlighted the importance of other environmental, social, institutional, and cultural factors. Therefore, a quantitative exercise has been made to verify the role of economic factors such as income and prices in the nutrition transition process.

This paper introduces Dignity-Centered Design (DCD), a sociotechnical framework for AI-mediated systems. While AI ethics often focuses on concepts such as fairness and transparency, DCD evaluates how systems shape lived experience, power dynamics, and human agency. Drawing on healthcare traditions and the Dignity Index, the framework articulates three dimensions (individual, relational, and systemic) alongside five core principles. It includes a Dignity Spectrum in AI System Design to assess design choices and applies these to healthcare AI to support reflective practice.

In plant engineering and industrial solution business, the focus is on developing customer-specific products. At the same time, finding suitable templates from previous projects (adaptation design) is essential for efficient product development. Conventional search tools in PDM/ERP systems are not suitable for this purpose, which is why structure-based similarity search was proposed in an earlier article. In this article, a feasibility study is conducted to determine what typical use cases exist and whether these can be easily SME-implemented with a large language model (LLM) as a search tool.

Conceptual design methods rarely optimize both requirement fit and cross-principle compatibility, leaving a gap in generating coherent early-stage solutions. Here, we introduce a mixed-integer linear programming formulation that selects one solution principle per function while jointly minimizing local requirement mismatch and system-level incompatibility. Using a small case study, we show how a trade-off parameter controls the balance between functional quality and integration robustness. The results demonstrate that the approach enables transparent, compatibility-aware conceptual synthesis.

Gaps in lived experience hinder designers from understanding users. Virtual Reality (VR) may bridge this gap with immersive simulations, but its validity lacks comprehensive examination. This study addresses that gap via a VR scenario simulating the challenges of essential tremor (involuntary hand movements). Following the experience, designers demonstrated significantly enhanced empathy and a deeper user understanding. This translated into more accurate and contextually grounded problem framing. Designers’ rationales also suggest they intuitively internalized core design thinking principles.

This paper presents ADT, a digital card-based toolkit designed to integrate AI into the Design Thinking process. A survey of 204 designers examined AI literacy, usage patterns, and adoption barriers. Results indicated uneven familiarity, with higher use in Prototyping and Testing stages. Key challenges included prompting, trust, ethics, and training gaps. ADT, thus, structures four professional roles across five design-thinking stages, providing reusable prompts, recommended AI tools, exemplar outputs, and ethical reminders to promote informed and responsible human–AI collaboration.

The study examines integrating absolute sustainability, based on planetary boundaries, into product design and development. A review of current frameworks shows that they focus on relative sustainability and lack mechanisms to encourage innovation within ecological limits. Analysis of fourteen publications shows that a design support tool should facilitate early-stage decision-making, incorporate scientific thresholds and circular economy principles, align with the SDGs and provide guidance on product development to create sustainable and transformative product solutions.

A blended learning approach was introduced to extend guideline-based training from key users to the wider end-user community in order to implement a new CAD/PLM environment. By combining asynchronous self-study of guidelines with synchronous, trainer-led sessions, the programme fostered procedural understanding and consistent modelling practices, as well as learner engagement. The results demonstrate how scalable blended learning strategies can bridge the gap between industrial training and academic education.