The continuous integration and verification of components is essential in distributed design processes. Identifying the optimal integration and verification frequency, however, can be challenging due to the complexity of product development. Especially the effect of human decision-making in partially isolated development scenarios is difficult to consider. Thus, we performed an experimental study based on the following three steps: first, an extension of the existing parameter design framework, which is used to conduct experiments under laboratory conditions, in which human subjects solve quantitative surrogate design tasks. Second, a series of experiments in which 32 subjects divided into groups of two solved 229 parameter design tasks with a varying integration and verification frequency. And, third, a statistical analysis of the results with respect to development time, coupling strength and process costs. According to our results, development time can be reduced by up to 71%, if the integration and verification frequency is doubled. If process costs are also considered, the optimal frequency can be subject to a conflict of goals between reducing development time and minimising process cost.

Archimedes, the founder of statics and hydrostatics, in his mathematics and physics studies, created methods related to his inventions of new machines, for example, the method of mechanical theorems based on his lever invention. He also used the principles of decomposition and replication underlying his heat ray invention, and these two principles permeate his work. Analysis of Archimedes’ work shows how he was perhaps the first to use methodically a strategy for solving diverse complex problems. In this article, we use the term Archimedes Code to encompass the way Archimedes approached problems including those two principles. Archimedes was perhaps the first design theorist and the first to think systematically about how to address design challenges. Furthermore, his work demonstrates the fundamental role of engineering practice in advancing science. The new insights regarding the Archimedes Code and its value in design practice may inspire both design researchers and practitioners.

The importance of inter- and transdisciplinary research for addressing today’s complex challenges has been increasingly recognised. This requires new forms of communication and interaction between researchers from different disciplines and nonacademic stakeholders. Demonstrators constitute a crucial communication tool in technology research and development and have the potential to leverage communication between different bodies of knowledge. However, there is little knowledge on how to design demonstrators. This research aims to understand how demonstrators from the fields Internet of Things and Robotics are designed to communicate technology. The goal is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of demonstrator practice with readily implemented design knowledge and to advance theoretical knowledge in the field of communicating artefacts. We thematically analysed 28 demonstrator design cases, which led to a typology that assists in categorising and understanding 13 key design principles. The typology is built from three perspectives: First, in terms of the overall goal communication, second, in terms of visitor engagement goals (attraction, initial engagement, deep engagement) and third, in terms of resource-related goals (low effort in development and operation). With this typology, we have taken a significant step towards understanding demonstrator design principles for effective technology communication between different stakeholders.

A wide range of disciplines are directing their methods and tools to help address the challenges of healthcare. Chief among these are design and operational research (OR). Though they have much in common, these two disciplines have existed in isolation for most of their history and there is currently a gulf between the two research communities. In this position paper, we rapidly review the contributions of design and OR in healthcare. We then identify similarities and complementarities between the two disciplines and communities when they consider healthcare systems. Finally, we propose practical steps to enable better collaboration. Our focus is on finding ways in which the two disciplines complement each other. When applying design to healthcare services, designers may wish to learn from OR, which has a long history of supporting improvements in healthcare organisation and services, particularly using quantitative data and analysis and modelling methods. In return, design has distinctive qualities that could augment the OR approach, such as its emphasis on wide and creative search for potential solutions, and iterative co-production and prototyping of solutions with clients. Better collaboration will require a coordinated effort but could yield a more comprehensive and effective approach to improving healthcare systems.

We investigate how four internet of things (IoT) companies perceive the large quantity of community-generated content as a significant source of innovation. We study the extent to which these companies are willing to align their internal organisation to cope with the external community dynamics and define beneficial modes of collaboration for all involved stakeholders. Four IoT companies adopting open-source hardware principles were selected as case studies. The data collection was based on 18 interviews highlighting both the perspectives of the companies and their corresponding communities and the opinions of key experts in the domain. In our findings, we illustrate the different manifestations of open business models and the companies’ concrete approaches to working with external stakeholders. It is shown that companies with a business history more clearly claim sovereignty over their strategic decisions in a community-infused model, while, on the other hand, the community-based companies pursue a community-led strategy.

Biobased composites, which are considered a sustainable alternative to plastics, are yet to create a significant influence on product design and manufacturing. A key reason for this is perceptual handicaps associated with biobased composites and this study was aimed at understanding the mechanisms behind biocomposite perception, in the context of digital visuals. This study of digital biocomposite visuals demonstrated that material perception is influenced by the visual characteristics of the material. Data analysis of the perceptual attributes of the materials pointed towards clear ‘clustering’ of the materials against these attributes. Analysis shows that visual features like fibres and surface appearance may impact aesthetic and functional evaluation and there is no effect on age, gender or polymer type. We also propose a reference framework to categorise biobased composites based on visual order.

Customer preference modelling has been widely used to aid engineering design decisions on the selection and configuration of design attributes. Recently, network analysis approaches, such as the exponential random graph model (ERGM), have been increasingly used in this field. While the ERGM-based approach has the new capability of modelling the effects of interactions and interdependencies (e.g., social relationships among customers) on customers’ decisions via network structures (e.g., using triangles to model peer influence), existing research can only model customers’ consideration decisions, and it cannot predict individual customer’s choices, as what the traditional utility-based discrete choice models (DCMs) do. However, the ability to make choice predictions is essential to predicting market demand, which forms the basis of decision-based design (DBD). This paper fills this gap by developing a novel ERGM-based approach for choice prediction. This is the first time that a network-based model can explicitly compute the probability of an alternative being chosen from a choice set. Using a large-scale customer-revealed choice database, this research studies the customer preferences estimated from the ERGM-based choice models with and without network structures and evaluates their predictive performance of market demand, benchmarking the multinomial logit (MNL) model, a traditional DCM. The results show that the proposed ERGM-based choice modelling achieves higher accuracy in predicting both individual choice behaviours and market share ranking than the MNL model, which is mathematically equivalent to ERGM when no network structures are included. The insights obtained from this study further extend the DBD framework by allowing explicit modelling of interactions among entities (i.e., customers and products) using network representations.

Injera is Ethiopian ethnic traditional staple food, made from teff and other crops. The country’s superfoods are highly regarded in many Western countries for their excellent nutritional properties (‘very low gluten’), and mineral composition. Injera provides sufficient conditions for fungi to grow and ruin injera by changing the texture and making it inedible. This study aimed to develop an evaporative cooler clay chamber (ECCC) used to extend the shelf life of injera by controlling temperature and relative humidity (RH). This system is an economical and efficient way to lower the temperature and increase RH. The results show the maximum daily ambient temperature reduced from 28.98 °C to 22.90 °C and increased the RH of the storage chamber from 28.78% to 80.94%, respectively. The temperature drops up to 6.08 °C, and the RH rises to 52.16% observed. Additionally, the effects of temperature, RH and potential of hydrogen were studied for identified rotten injera and designed for injera storage. ECCC can store freshly made injera for 9 days before any visible mould stains appear, significantly reducing weight loss with an average cooling efficiency of 79.31%. Therefore, this study might help to develop low-cost cold storage for injera preservation at farms end in Ethiopia.

Idea evaluation is used to identify and select ideas for development as future innovations. However, approaching idea evaluation as a decision gate can limit the role of the person evaluating ideas, create fixation bias, and underutilise the person’s creative potential. Although studies show that during evaluation experts are able to engage in design activities, it is still not clear how they design and develop ideas. The aim of this study was to understand how experts develop ideas during evaluation. Using the think-aloud technique, we identify different ways in which experts develop ideas. Specifically, we show how experts transform initial idea concepts using iterative steps of elaboration and transformation of different idea components. Then, relying on concept-knowledge theory (C-K theory), we identify six types of reasoning that the experts use during idea evaluation. This helps us to distinguish between three different roles that experts can move between during evaluation: gatekeeper, designer managing fixation, and designer managing defixation. These findings suggest that there is value in viewing idea evaluation as a design process because it allows us to identify and leverage the experts’ knowledge and creativity to a fuller extent.

User experience (UX) application in the practice of engineering and product design is still limited. The present paper provides insights into research on UX design and recommendations for design practitioners by pointing out common criticalities. These outcomes are achieved through a literature review on how UX relates to design. First, issues in benefitting from UX understanding in design are identified with a specific focus on theoretical contributions. Second, experimental papers investigating UX and design are analysed in relation to previously identified issues. Although issues are present to some extent in all the contributions, the empirical studies dealing with UX in design are overall valid. The results highlight UX’s support in revealing design requirements, but its capability of steering design processes is arguable, as concrete guidelines for practitioners are not well described. Based on identified issues, the authors propose a checklist to make UX studies in design more reliable and their outcomes more comparable.

Several concepts and types of procedures for assessing novelty and related concepts exist in the literature. Among them, the two approaches originally proposed by Shah and colleagues are often considered by scholars. These metrics rely on well-defined novelty types and a specific concept of novelty; however, more than 20 years after the first publication, it is still not clear whether and to what extent these metrics are actually used, why they are used and how. Through a comprehensive review of the papers citing the main work of Shah, Vargas-Hernandez & Smith (2003a, 2003b) (the main study where the metrics are comprehensively described and applied), the present work aims to bridge this gap. The results highlight that only a few of the citing papers actually use the assessment approach proposed by Shah et al. and that a nonnegligible number uses a modified or adapted version of the original metrics. Furthermore, several criticalities in the application of the metrics have been uncovered, which are expected to provide relevant information for scholars involved in reliable and repeatable novelty assessments.

Co-design is seen as crucial for designing solutions for resource-constrained people living in developing countries. To best understand their needs, user engagement and co-design strategies need to first be developed. In this Design Practice Brief, a process of co-design was created and used to understand ways telecommunication engineers could engage with rural communities in Uganda. It reports and reflects on (i) the experience of co-designing with nondesigners and (ii) creating a co-design structure and developing co-design methods of engaging with community members living in developing countries. In doing so, it offers a format and case study for future practitioners facilitating and conducting co-design with nondesigners and contributes to a knowledge gap in the reporting and reflection of co-design practice. This case study is unique as the co-design practice was achieved remotely (online), crossed disciplines (designers and telecommunication engineers) and cultural boundaries (European and African). It finds that in co-designing with nondesigners, preparation and structure are key, with acknowledgement and management of cultural and discipline differences.

Topology optimization has been identified as a powerful tool to improve aircraft structures for many years. Yet, innovative layouts have not been successfully implemented in commercial aircraft for several reasons. One reason identified by our research group is the lack of design constraints during topology optimization, such as buckling stability, which yields complex solutions that are not easily manufacturable. Second, the complexity of the resulting layouts makes integration with other systems highly challenging. With respect to these challenges, we propose a new heuristic layout optimization process: complexity-driven layout exploration for aircraft structures (CD-LEAS). The new process addresses the challenges of complexity and nonlinear constraints, such as buckling, in aircraft structure layout optimization. The novelty of CD-LEAS comes from the integration of a relative complexity metric as a driver to navigate the design space efficiently. Two case studies of commonly used stiffened panels are carried out to showcase the performance of the process. The results show that using complexity to navigate an explicit design space allows our process to quickly output a family of simple, light, stiff and buckling-resistant layouts.

Previous research on design thinking (DT) has focused mainly on describing and explaining observed phenomena rather than manipulating variables within the boundaries of its principles to assess the impact of these changes. DT, as a human-centric problem-solving and innovation method, has varying baseline exposure levels of nondesigners and novices when codesigning. This qualitative research shows how DT can be redesigned to accommodate the inclusion and engagement of novices and nondesigners in the codesign process with enhanced DT method applicability. DT novices and nondesigners are challenged in codesign engagements with others and need an intuitive method that leads them to the same or better design results as a classic DT method. A redesign towards an intuitive DT method for nondesigners puts special consideration on method language, efficiency and cycle time. A case study validates its qualification under real-life circumstances when codesigning with DT novices and nondesigners. Overall, the research demonstrates that DT with regard to nondesigners can be simplified and redesigned for efficiency and effectiveness.

Engineered products have economic, environmental, and social impacts, which comprise the major dimensions of sustainability. This paper seeks to explore interactions between design parameters when social impacts are incorporated into the concept development phase of the systems design process. Social impact evaluation is increasing in importance similar to what has happened in recent years with environmental impact consideration in the design of engineered products. Concurrently, research into new airship design has increased. Airships have yet to be reintroduced at a large scale or for a range of applications in society. Although airships have the potential for positive environmental and economic impacts, the social impacts are still rarely considered. This paper presents a case study of the hypothetical introduction of airships in the Amazon region of Brazil to help local farmers transport their produce to market. It explores the design space in terms of both engineering parameters and social impacts using a discrete-event simulation to model the system. The social impacts are found to be dependent not only on the social factors and airship design parameters but also on the farmer-airship system, suggesting that socio-technical systems design will benefit from integrated social impact metric analysis.

Engineering design research has focused on developing and refining methods and evaluating design education in design education, design research and design in practice. One important aspect that is not thoroughly investigated is the influence of bias on design within these spaces of design. Bias is known to impact the interpretation of information, decision-making and practices in all areas. These factors are vital in engineering design education, practice and research, emphasizing the importance of investigating bias. The first goal of this study is to highlight and synthesize existing bias research in design education, research and practice. The second goal is to identify areas where bias may be under-researched or under-reported in design. To achieve these goals, a comparative analysis is performed against a comparable field: medicine. Many parallels exist between both fields. Patient–provider and designer–end-user relationships are comparable. Medical education is comparable to design education with the cooperative, inquiry-based and integrated learning pedagogy approaches. Lastly, physicians and design engineers both solve cognitively complex systems-oriented problems. Leveraging research on bias in medicine enables us to highlight gaps in engineering design. Recommendations are made to help design researchers address these gaps.

This paper presents a sub-study on participatory design in visual management (VM), bracketed from a larger case study. In this case, VM refers to the recurrent meetings when managers and co-workers use dashboards (VM boards) to continuously organize work activities and performances and contribute to the ongoing development and improvements within the organization. The study focuses on when the managers and co-workers are participating in the process of designing and visualizing work-related information regarding workload for future VM boards. This paper emphasizes collaborative workshops and the creation of moodboards as participatory methods, and the application of theories of metaphorical thinking and conceptual and visual metaphors. The findings show that participants perceive the visual output they create metaphorically, in this case, the moodboards. Such visual outputs represent conceptual and visual metaphors that evoke the participants’ sharing of core concepts and an establishment of stories related to the information to be designed. In turn, the metaphors and the storytelling stress desires, visions, objectives, and themes, besides workplace atmospheres, norms, and values governing the workplace. This understanding translates to shared work experiences where conceptual and visual thinking impact how work teams develop work-related information on VM boards together.

Product prototypes and particularly those that are 3D printed will have mass properties that are significantly different from the product they represent. This affects both functional performance and stakeholder perception of the prototype. Within this work, computational emulation of mass properties for a primitive object (a cube) is considered, developing a baseline numerical method and parameter set with the aim of demonstrating the means of improving feel in 3D printed prototypes. The method is then applied and tuned for three case study products – a games controller, a hand drill and a laser pointer – demonstrating that product mass properties could be numerically emulated to within ~1% of the target values. This was achieved using typical material extrusion technology with no physical or process modification. It was observed that emulation accuracy is dependent on the relative offset of the centre of mass from the geometric centre. A sensitivity analysis is further undertaken to demonstrate that product-specific parameters can be beneficial. With tuning of these values, and with some neglect of practical limitations, emulation accuracy as high as ~99.8% can be achieved. This was shown to be a reduction in error of up to 99.6% relative to a conventional fabrication.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for engineering design are promising for their stress management, cognition and well-being benefits. Prior work concluded that engineering design is stressful and that each engineering design stage has unique stressors. This non-randomized study investigated the effect of an MBI on students’ cognitive stress and final design creativity during a multistage, hands-on design assessment. Data were collected using surveys, project deliverables and follow-up interviews. While no significant increase was found in students’ measured state mindfulness due to the intervention, students in the MBI condition were more likely to perceive the intervention positively compared to students in the control condition (alternative use tasks). Students in both conditions were found to have similar levels of state stress, which indicates that the MBI had no observable effect on students’ measured stress during design. Although students in the MBI condition were found to produce higher-quality final designs, there were no differences in design creativity or novelty. When data were clustered to identify types of student experiences, state mindfulness was found to meaningfully contribute, but state stress was not. Future research should continue to investigate MBIs in engineering design as a potential approach to improve design education and outcomes.