To support culture-sensitive creative problem-solving in distributed product development, two methods, the CSS Method and the Guideline, were developed. This study presents a Decision Tool to help users select the appropriate method based on team context and goals. Using Design Research Methodology, the tool was developed, evaluated, and refined through initial expert validation. Results show the tool improves method selection and usability while highlighting room for improvements and real-world testing.

Suboptimal product design and compliance failures lead to economic losses. While AI excels in domain-specific tasks like defect detection, existing solutions lack cross-domain reasoning and explainability. This paper presents Product Singularity, a universal AI framework that integrates multimodal data (images, text, etc) for comprehensive product evaluation across quality, safety, performance, ergonomics, and compliance. A proof-of-concept in consumer bottles validated by experts achieved 90% agreement and reduced evaluation time. Its modular design supports adaptation to other product categories.

This study examines how residents perceive and negotiate flexibility in their residential spaces across various life stages through a participatory workshop involving 80 participants. Using modular blocks, participants reconfigured layouts for scenarios such as shared living, marriage, family growth, work, and ageing. Visual and thematic analyses revealed flexibility priorities, trade-offs, and transformation patterns discussed, showing it peaks in early and mid-life and centres on bedrooms and workspaces as a temporal, user-defined phenomenon of adaptable housing.

This design-led study explores how circular economy principles can be embedded in research prototyping while comparing environmental sensing methods. A reusable outdoor prototype, deployed in three contexts, combined embedded sensors and API data. Using proxy indicators (energy, material mass, emissions) and end-of-life planning, API sensing indicated a far lower impact, while embedded sensing offered hyper-local data. All prototype components were either reused or repurposed, demonstrating circular prototyping in practice, with findings intended as design-informing rather than definitive.

The EU 2050 carbon neutrality target drives growing interest in renewable energy (RE) integration in building design, yet social housing organizations face difficulties integrating them early in design due to complexity and high upfront costs. This paper presents a three-step method based on the Set Based Design approach to define the design space using a morphological chart. This offers a robust and adaptable framework to formalize and structure domain-specific knowledge, clarifies design options, and supports informed decision-making for RE integration in social housing design.

Over the years, the rapid and widespread spread of weeds across international borders has become a major threat to agriculture and native ecosystems. Seeds of invasive species are often transported via commodity trade, making rapid and accurate identification essential. This review aims to explore current practices at plant quarantine centers worldwide for detecting weed seeds and to examine potential molecular techniques that could revolutionize this process in the future. Book chapters, scholarly research articles, conference proceedings, and previously published literature on weed seed detection approaches and plant quarantine inspections in various countries were reviewed, examined, and compared to identify the tools and techniques currently used or potentially developed. The literature survey revealed that countries employ diverse strategies for issuing phytosanitary certificates for import and export commodities, adhering to agreements established by global and regional plant protection organizations. Both traditional morphology-based techniques and advanced molecular tools were identified in these practices. Weed seeds present particular detection challenges at quarantine ports, including physiological dormancy that undermines germination-based tests, morphological similarity to crop seeds, and zero-tolerance phytosanitary thresholds for certain noxious species. The review identified various deviations and advanced methods for detecting weed seeds in import and export commodities, aiming to determine the most appropriate or suitable technique for plant quarantine services in worldwide.

The circular economy is central to sustainability, yet many products cannot comply to its principles. Equally, assessing circularity remains challenging due to the multitude and complexity of approaches. This contribution presents a feasible multi-criteria assessment tool, grounded in established DfCE principles, for evaluating product circularity at various system levels. Developed through an exploratory literature review, it integrates qualitative and quantitative indicators with a retention-option-based weighting system. Its applicability is demonstrated through a medium-complex case study.

Early-stage concept evaluation is critical for selecting viable designs. This study introduces a multi-agent generative AI framework for assessing concepts across four configurations: AI with retrieval-augmented knowledge, AI without external knowledge, human experts, and a hybrid approach. The findings show that AI panels tend to produce uniform evaluation patterns, while retrieval-augmented knowledge alters rating behaviour without leading to closer alignment with human judgement. Hybrid setting achieved closest alignment, indicating AI is effective when combined with expert interpretation.

This paper aims to explore and categorize the product innovation initiatives that European manufacturing companies with science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets are adopting to advance toward their decarbonization goals. An inductive analysis was conducted on climate change management reports from 326 European manufacturing companies. Two main categories of strategies emerged from the analysis: the development of new low-carbon products and the improvement of existing products. Within these categories, the study highlights specific initiatives adopted by companies.

Chemotherapy (CTX) is essential for cancer treatment, yet its cytotoxic properties pose significant risks to clinicians. As cancer incidence rises, demand for safe and reliable CTX preparation methods intensifies; Automated Drug Compounding (ADC) promises to address these issues. Nonetheless, technical and operational barriers limit adoption. Foremost, the reliable manipulation of syringes by robotic end effectors remains a challenge. This paper examines limitations of current end effectors for ADC systems, identifies design requirements necessary, and proposes a novel design to address them.

Pharmaceutical waste (PW) poses environmental, economic and public health challenges, yet effective solutions remain underexplored. This study used a co-design approach across two NHS Scotland workshops to examine medicine-use experiences and generate interventions. Three concepts emerged: transparent patient packaging, a tactile communication aid and a gamified virtual medicine-cabinet app, highlighting the value of bottom-up design methods for addressing PW.

Myopia remains a major barrier to immersive VR use, causing blur and discomfort. This review compares software, hardware, and hybrid compensation approaches. Software methods offer flexible, low-cost enhancement but limited optical correction. Hardware solutions provide accurate adjustment at ergonomic cost. Hybrid systems combine adaptive optics and real-time rendering, showing promise for personalized correction. Key trade-offs and future design directions are outlined.

Industry–academia collaborative research faces a persistent challenge: how to promote effective knowledge transfer while maintaining both scientific rigor and industrial relevance. This paper introduces nine methodological guidelines for a Dual Impact Research Methodology (DIRM). The guidelines include mechanisms such as dual-purpose artifacts, hybrid evaluation criteria, and institutionalized knowledge capture. The paper concludes the guidelines provide a coherent yet adaptable framework for achieving dual impact: advancing theory while delivering actionable industrial value.

This paper examines the role of product design in digital age-inclusivity. As digitalisation accelerates, older adults face persistent exclusion. We argue that interaction-level tensions between the intangible nature of screen-based systems and embodied human perception contribute to this divide. We introduce the Embodied Inclusion Framework as a structured approach to enhancing physical accessibility, cognitive usability and somatic safety in digital interaction.

Battery packs in BEVs are multidisciplinary design challenges balancing cost, weight, volume, range, and charging time. As the heaviest and most expensive component, their reliability and safety under vibration and shock is critical. This contribution presents an indicator to cluster measured vibration data of BEV battery packs based on coupling with the car body, enabling identification of representative designs and generalization of vibration behavior for future, more integrated architectures.

Large infrastructure projects often face misalignments that Delays outcomes. This paper presents a co-design workshop addressing such challenges in a European railway project. Guided by complexity theory, the workshop enabled participants to reflect and co-create strategies for alignment. Pre/post surveys and facilitator observations show increased confidence and engagement, with notable awareness in addressing misalignments. These findings highlight co-design’s value as an adaptive, participatory approach for creating recognition and managing complexity in interorganizational projects.

Divergence and convergence are central to design processes, but can these patterns be made visible, and what might they reveal? This paper examines design team dynamics through NLP by tracing cognitive trajectories in weekly reflections. Textual data are transformed into numerical values and plotted in a Synergy Diagram, enabling instructors to monitor team bands. This paper consists of a four year study covers 48 project teams and 250 participants, comparing team bands across multiple bandwidth measures and showing how they vary against a design outcome, such as total grades (TG).