This paper examines how Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) function as self-governing institutions for managing Internet address resources and what episodes of stress reveal about the resilience and vulnerabilities of this system. Our analysis offers an institutional assessment of the RIR system and evaluates how it has responded to scarcity, technological change, and market pressures. We argue that the RIR model endures because its rules reflect Ostromian principles, including clearly defined boundaries, community participation, and credible monitoring, that sustain cooperation. Using these principles as normative benchmarks, we identify pathways for reform that preserve the RIRs’ decentralized, member-driven governance institutions while strengthening transparency, adaptability, and cross-regional resilience.

Why do all design acts begin by explicating a bounded frame of work? In design ontology, framing is the selection and representation of components and features in a system to guide perception and decision of designers but remains implicit. As a structural abstraction it becomes an explicit principle, formalised by a computational methodology that parameterises bounds and projects elements of a design having weighted attributes, in a relational context. Thus, the cognitive act becomes epistemic to compute for generating and evaluating frames, aligning design reasoning with scientific discourse.

Successful synthesis of a new design requires balancing of trade-offs that arise from multiple competing design objectives and constraints. Early-stage design synthesis typically does not consider detailed technical constraints; a task left to late-stage mathematical design optimisation to refine an already-determined configuration. The recently developed Multi-Objective Monotonicity Analysis (MOMA) has shown that design optimisation can be used successfully in configuration redesign. This article extends the MOMA approach to early-stage design. Synthesis of an aptly named ideal design is achieved by focusing on the avoidance or reduction of trade-offs and by managing active constraints across all stages of the design process. The ideal design meets a set of formal conditions, which provide the basis for a systematic collection of corresponding design principles that can be selectively combined to create new embodiments, avoiding overly restrictive trade-offs and constraints. These principles are consistent with the decision making of experienced mechanical designers, shown here in the industrial practice for designing drug delivery devices.

In the context of system of systems (SoS) engineering, the incorporation of design principles is critical to guide the engineering process. This paper presents a systematic literature review to synthesize a list of principles tailored for SoS. 26 principles were identified as generic principles and 39 were mapped to the specific challenges in SoS engineering. Through an evaluation using the principle of modularisation in the design of a charging infrastructure, the study offers insights into the real-world effectiveness of these principles, showing their relevance in SoS engineering tasks.

Weak ties contribute to an individual's happiness, health and career, yet networking events supporting weak ties are often considered ineffective and unenjoyable. More support is needed to aid the design of these experiences. This inductive qualitative study explores how weak tie interactions occurred in a 3-day event for a professional networking community. Data was collected from multiple behavioural settings through direct observation, semi-structured interviews and archival data. Results highlight five structures underpinning weak tie interactions and associated implications for design.

With the dissemination of additive manufacturing (AM), numerous methods have emerged to support the design process. One possibility is to improve functional solutions through AM-conformal design. Literature-based criteria for the assessment of AM-conformity already exist. Within our study, we address the gap in criteria between a theoretical perspective and a practitioner's perspective. To this end, we first explain the application of the criteria through a use case and conduct an evaluation in an industrial environment adding practitioner's criteria to enable the assessment of AM-conformity.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) brought new design freedom and possibilities that enable design and manufacturing of products with new forms and functionalities. To utilise these possibilities a new design approach emerged, Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), that contains methods and tools for supporting AM oriented design process. Designers working with AM are aware of the need to apply DfAM and AM possibilities in conceptual design phase where they have the most significant influence on product architecture and form but are facing a lack of suitable DfAM approaches for early design phases. Therefore, the presented research is investigating possibilities of storing and representing AM knowledge in the form of design principles to be used in the conceptual design phase. The paper proposes conceiving of Design Principles for Additive Manufacturing repository where formalised AM knowledge is stored in the form of design principles and structured based on function criteria. In the paper, various elements of design principle representation are discussed, as well as their role in the conceptual design process.