There is a need for responsible engineering design to accommodate the diverse user requirements that come with the global phenomenon of population ageing. Inclusive design can address these diverse requirements through the consideration of a wide diversity of user needs within the design process. However, uptake of inclusive design in industry is limited, with designer awareness of the approach and its associated methods and tools noted as barriers to its uptake. This research aims to understand the current approach to inclusive design education within UK Higher Education Institutions, utilising interviews with design educators and a student survey. The study concluded that teaching of inclusive design varied between institutions with conflicting responses from academics and students relating to the methodologies taught. This study recommends that greater transparency should be encouraged between institutions to encourage the development of a cohesive inclusive design education strategy, in addition to the development of a framework to aid the implementation of appropriate inclusive methods and tools within the design process.

This paper will adopt the Munich Agile Concepts (MAGIC) on the design of Vertistops and Vertiports (Verti-X) for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Systems. Vertiports and Vertistops are single or multi-landing spaces for air taxis, which are electric-powered vertical take-off and landing (eVTOLs) aircraft. The target of this paper is to apply a holistic approach how to design so called Verti-X in a holistic and system of system method from the Requirement-, Function-. Architecture- and the Implementation phase. The MAGIC approach contains all of the requierd phases which are necessary to build up such a complex design of Verti-X. Therefore, based on the literature survey, we have determined the key components of the Verti-X design with a thorough requirement analysis. Then, we have followed the existed criteria and regulations to design a valid and verified Verti-X which fulfills all the requirement. Furthermore, the focus of this paper is to apply the first four phases of MAGIC regarding the requirement, function, architecture and the implementation of such Verti-X Design.

Augmented Reality seems a promising tool to provide engaging and effective educational experiences, thanks to its potentiality in stimulating intrinsic motivation, that could influence the learning process and the attitude of the users towards behaviours. This paper presents the Resized Plastic Augmented Reality learning experience, designed on the basis of Dunleavy's framework to provide a systemic overview of the microplastics issue to allow users to understand its mechanisms, educate them about their role in the system and help them to connect this information to their everyday actions.

Novel products are commonly realized by integrating heterogeneous technologies. Product architecting focus on defining the scheme by which the product functions are allocated to physical components. A DSM-based clustering method that integrates technical complexity and strategic concerns has previously been proposed. It has been shown that interaction weights in the DSM may affect the clustering result. A complexity-based interaction strength model to be used in DSM clustering is proposed here. The case study gives promising results from both interaction performance and safety points of view.

This study explores how large language models like ChatGPT comprehend language and assess information. Through two experiments, we compare ChatGPT's performance with humans', addressing two key questions: 1) How does ChatGPT compare with human raters in evaluating judgment-based tasks like speculative technology realization? 2) How well does ChatGPT extract technical knowledge from non-technical content, such as mining speculative technologies from text, compared to humans? Results suggest ChatGPT's promise in knowledge extraction but also reveal a disparity with humans in decision-making.

Maintenance decision making is an important part of managing the costs, effectiveness and risk of maintenance. One way to improve maintenance efficiency without affecting the risk picture is to group maintenance jobs. Literature includes many examples of algorithms for the grouping of maintenance activities. However, the data is not always available, and with increasing plant complexity comes increasingly complex decision requirements, making it difficult to leave the decision making up to algorithms.

This paper suggests a framework for the standardisation of maintenance data as an aid for maintenance experts to make decisions on maintenance grouping. The standardisation improves the basis for decisions, giving an overview of true variance within the available data. The goal of the framework is to make it simpler to apply tacit knowledge and make right decisions.

Applying the framework in a case study showed that groups can be identified and reconfigured and potential savings easily estimated when maintenance jobs are standardised. The case study enabled an estimated 7%-9% saved on the number of hours spent on the investigated jobs.

Conflict can be both a productive and detrimental reality of design collaboration. While most studies on conflict characterize findings by type (conflict about the task, process, or interpersonal relationships), we extend this typology to understand the causes, topics, and outcomes of conflict. To do so, we analyze communications in a virtual chat platform, collected in a hybrid work environment. A thematic analysis on over 6000 messages between student design teams on the enterprise communication platform Slack revealed three emergent conflict themes: Engineering Design, Project Management, and Communication. A mapping of the themes to a widely-cited typology of conflict found an over- representation of task (productive) and process (detrimental) conflict in the Engineering Design and Project Management themes, respectively. The distribution of types of conflict in the Communication theme is representative of the entire dataset, suggesting that communication can be a cause and outcome in all types of conflict. Overall, our classification of conflict is the first step towards describing triads of the causes, topics, and outcomes of conflict, a contribution which will drive the development of interventions for design team conflict.

To satisfy customer needs in the best way, companies offer them an almost infinite number of product variants. Although, an identical product was not built before, the values of its attributes must be determined during the product configuration process. This paper introduces a methodical approach to predict the values of product attributes based on customer feature configurations using machine learning. Machine learning reduces the effort compared to rule-based expert systems and is both, more accurate and faster. The approach was validated by predicting vehicle weights using industrial data.

Information collection may affect the design quality and designer's performance through changing the structure of information and the way how information is searched and organized. Based on the theoretical analysis conducted by Wang et al., the present work continues to investigate the influence of designer's natural choice of information collection strategy on his/her mental stress both theoretically and empirically. Designers’ stresses are quantified from HRV data and are compared under different information collection strategies.

An ageing population leading to more chronic disease is straining healthcare systems. This paper makes two core contributions to healthcare systems design research: Firstly, a systemic techno-behavioural approach is presented to support intervention design with value-effective health outcomes. The systemic techno-behavioural perspective takes into consideration the interaction between three angles: The current healthcare system in place, the technological opportunities for addressing an issue and a broader and deeper understanding of the behaviour of those involved. The purpose of considering these three angels is to create interventions that are more robust. This will help inform healthcare systems design researchers and other stakeholders. Secondly, it is proposed that interventions should be grounded in behavioural theory, a collection of theories are presented to be incorporated in the design process of interventions. The systemic techno-behavioural approach is applied to dementia care highlighting the need to understand the dynamic relationship between the context of the current healthcare delivery system, technology, and behaviour to improve quality of care during the progression of the disease.

The integration of users' perception in the design process is and important challenge for the optimization of products. This study describes how design recommendations can be drawn, from a perceptual experiment with a panel of subjects using a multi-objective interactive genetic algorithm (IGA). The application concerns the bi-objective optimization of the unpleasantness and the detectability of sounds for electric vehicles (EV). After a description of the experimental protocol for the assessment of the detectability and the unpleasantness of EV sounds (listening test), a set of optimal sounds (Pareto efficient) is defined with an IGA experiment. The analysis of these sounds, based on a probabilistic analysis of the selection process, leads to the definition of design recommendations. A second listening test, involving recommended sounds but also other design proposals, allows an evaluation of the validity of the approach. Results show that the sounds recommended obtain interesting performance, in particular to improve the detectability of EV sounds.

More than ever, the ability to quickly and effectively shape ideas in a 3D environment is essential for industrial designers and with the rise of XR technology, a shift from traditional, screen-based CAD to VR-based CAD could improve time to market and personal effectiveness for product designers. In this study, this shift is assessed from a user experience perspective. Ten professional product developers are asked to design respirator masks. The experiment takes place in the Gravity Sketch VR app, using a HTC Vive Pro HMD. The participants are observed, surveyed and interviewed regarding different parameters on their experience. Participants experienced VR Aided Design as quick and intuitive. They personally felt performant and they enjoyed the process. As of now, VRAD is not seen as an alternative to neither sketching nor CAD. Instead, new users experience it being a new tool that can be positioned either parallel to or in between ideation sketching, clay modeling and detailed CAD design. Lastly, this paper includes a preliminary look at a VR Stylus for virtual reality aided design.

This exploratory work aims to understand which elements of a building mostly attract visitors’ attention. An experiment was conducted to allow participants to visit a prototype tiny house while wearing eye-tracking glasses. Identified gazed elements of the prototype were selected and the corresponding dwell times used as variables. The limited dwell times on structural elements show that they can be easily overshadowed by other features present in the building. This leads to a design problem when the novelty and the quality of a new product, markedly a building, reside in the materials used.

This study examines the relationship between the product structuring principles chosen in modular product families and the business results of companies. In the three case studies of the article, it can be seen that products that meet the modularity definitions discussed in the literature have been able to utilise the benefits of modularity in a very varied way. In one business case, the effect of modularity on business has been negative. In two other cases, the effect has been positive - in one of these even the profitability of the business has significantly improved. The aim of this article is to identify whether product designing consistently has been following some product structuring principles previously mentioned in modularisation literature or whether case studies bring new principles to consciousness. In all case studies, the product structuring principles used are also discussed in the previous modularisation studies at a varying extent. In the discussion section, we raise the question of whether the recording and use of product structuring principles in design briefs could lead to making the product design decisions that affect the business positively.

The industry's interest in Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR) technologies started from the beginning of their appearance in the research world. Over the years, scholars observed ups and downs, to which various factors contributed. In recent years these technologies, now known as eXtended Reality (XR), have returned to fascinate the industrial world, mainly because most of the related enabling technologies have improved to the point of pushing companies to re-invest in them. The introduction of approaches such as the digital twin one and the recent hype on the metaverse is also a push in this direction. A few questions arise: what are the benefits of such technologies in the industry today, and what are the unexplored possibilities? Starting from a systematic literature review and exploring the practical implications of integrating technologies in the industrial field, the paper tries to answer these questions. The paper is not intended as a technological forecast but as a stimulus for future research.

Circular product design has been recognised in the academia as a foundational step for companies to make circular business models functional and viable. In this regards, it is vital to have a quick-and-easy practical toolkit providing diagnostics and specific guidelines on product design in terms of circularity performance. The present paper announces a Circular Product Design Toolkit (CPD Toolkit) under development now, which aims at enhancing the circularity potential of an existing product by redesign. The following objectives are addressed. First, a brief review of existing approaches in the field of product-level circularity metrics and also available circular product design tools to clarify their purpose and practical value is conducted. Second, the scientific approach to assess a product circularity performance, previously developed, as a methodological background of the CPD Toolkit is outlined. Third, the basic principles and building blocks of the CPD Toolkit are briefly set out with further discussion in terms of possible presentation of information block as actual product circularity dataset and guideline part dealing with specific instructions for a company on how to progress in the circularity of the product produced.

Occupational therapists modify mass-produced and universally-designed assistive technologies (ATs) to fulfill the specific needs of people with disabilities. We interviewed ten occupational therapists with experience in modifying ATs in order to understand adaptation processes. Our findings reveal the reasoning behind adaptation, common ATs that require adaptation, as well as the collaborative nature of adaptation. We propose a new framework called Adaptable Universal Design (AUD) that blends Universal Design with the need to adapt ATs in order to fulfill unique and specific user needs.

Among 75-90% of residents in Danish nursing homes are diagnosed with dementia. This article explore how a team of five 3rd semester bachelor's design students sought to improve quality of life for elderly people with dementia in a nursing home through a co-design process of a new sensory stimulation technology. Participatory Design researchers agree that it is important to involve diverse actors in the design process such as elderly with dementia, nursing home management, nursing staff etc. But when involving many different actors in designing new products, services and systems the challenge is to navigate the many perspectives and concerns of these actors, which is often conflicting and hence needs negotiating. ‘We draw upon the ANT framework to analyse how ‘matters of concern’ (MoCs) are negotiated and to discuss how designers navigate by staging and facilitating design interactions to support negotiation of MoCs among numerous actors during the design process.

Information usage is a key aspect of creative cognition and has been shown to influence design outcomes. The goal of this study was to investigate the information seeking behavior of student designers while validating a previously developed “Typology of Design Information” framework. Participants were asked to use and evaluate pieces of information during the idea generation process. Results show a discrepancy between the information that participants naturally sought out and their perceived utility (helpfulness) of the information. However, individually significant relationships between perceived utility and behavior were found with features generated by participants, suggesting that even though participants' perception of the utility of information pieces and their actual behavior are not related, both constructs have an identifiable influence on design outcomes. This study advances the Typology of Design Information framework by empirically exploring the link between the types of information used by novice designers and the ideas generated, and it illustrates that participants employ complex cognitive behavior when engaging with design information to generate novel ideas.

The tolerancing of products for manufacturing is usually performed at the end of the design process and the responsibility of the designer. Although components are commonly tolerated to ensure functionality, time-based influences, like wear, that occur during operation, are often neglected. This could result in small amounts of scrap after production, but high quantities of failure during operation. To overcome this issue, this paper presents an approach to perform a multi-objective optimization considering tolerances based on a wear simulation. Thereby, mean shifts serve as optimization variables, while the aim of the optimization is to generate an optimal ratio of scrap to failure. In addition, the optimization results are interpreted and further options for the designer are presented. Moreover, the approach is exemplary applied to a use case.