The contradictions of TRIZ are now widespread and recognized as an effective inventive design tool. They make it possible to find solution concepts to problems that cannot be solved by optimization approaches. However, many contradictions could be formulated and it could be difficult to choose the priority one. The authors propose here two methods to formulate the contradictions and identify the priority contradiction: an experimental approach on the one hand, and a multiphysics approach on the other hand. This analysis, illustrated through an example of 3D printing of parts, shows that these two approaches are similar in terms of result, and indeed make it possible to formulate contradictions taking into account all the complexity of a system.

The status of Smart Home Appliances (SHAs) in the smart home industry has been raised as major components of a smart home. To design a good SHA, diverse stakeholders in the smart home ecosystem need to have a common understanding of smart homes and SHAs. However, the studies on what they are, especially those reflecting practitioners’ point of view, have been scarce.

In this research, we conducted systematic literature reviews and practitioner interviews using the concept mapping method to identify the attributes of SHAs depending both on academia and industry. In addition, we suggest a framework of the smart home ecosystem which describes how those attributes are revealed in the relationships among SHAs, users, and external stakeholders.

Since all of the interviewees are Korean SHA development professionals, the findings from this research could have been limited to the current status of the Korean SHA industry. Nonetheless, we expect that this research would contribute to building a consensus on what smart homes and SHAs are and provide the designers and developers of SHAs with systematic perspectives on smart homes.

Corporate climate action is critical in supporting the transition towards a low-carbon economy. This paper explores what design practices have been adopted by manufacturing companies that have committed to science-based emission reduction targets and are making progress towards those targets. We contribute to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of circular economy (CE) actions related to product design supporting firms in reaching their emission reduction targets, contributing to the calls for more research showing evidence between CE adoption and emissions reduction.

Remaining seated for extended periods increases the risk health issues and discomfort perception. Consequently, the seat-pan design is crucial and could be mainly influenced by two factors: pressure distribution and seat contour. For seat pan discomfort, the lower average pressure is accompanied by less discomfort. Moreover, a seat contour with a large contact area is correlated with more comfort. Thus, a shaped cushion had been accurately designed (Virtual Prototype) and realized (Physical Prototype) aiming to translate the pressure distribution due to interaction between seat and buttock in a geometric shape, suitable for the international population (including P5 females and P95 males). With this shape, the pressure should be more uniform and lower, the contact area at interface bigger, and the perceived comfort higher. Both Virtual and Physical Prototype design had been described in this paper through a repeatable and straightforward approach. Also, experiments had been performed to validate the hypothesis through a comparison with a standard flat cushion. Results showed the goal of the design had been reached: the shaped cushion scored less pressure distribution and higher contact area than the flat cushion.

Topology Optimization (TO) is an established method for the development of high strength and lightweight structural components. However, its results have to be geometrically revised to obtain a computational model that meets product development requirements. Design has to be in accordance with manufacturing constraints. Geometry reconstruction therefore still is a typically manual and tedious task, but increasingly supported by computational and automated approaches. In this paper, the inclusion of a casting constraint in an automated Medial Axis based reconstruction method is presented. Since the Medial Axis provides cross-section values by the computation of maximally inscribed spheres, this information is used for geometry reconstruction and even further for the purposeful adaption of the cross-section to match Heuver's circle method. Thereby, the directed solidification of molten material is considered. With a predefined feeder position, the demonstrator of a suspension control arm is used to show the application of the method. Resulting CAD-models are also structurally evaluated for their stiffness characteristics.

The use of agile methods can also be advantageous in the development of physical products, as pilot projects have shown so far. However, the transfer of agile methods to the entire organisation is difficult, due to the different, prevailing circumstances of the various development activities. We have therefore defined a new approach subdividing product development into agile technology-driven and traditional product-oriented development. This model considers the methodological characteristics and thus enables the combination of the benefits of both agile and traditional development methods..

While products get more challenging to repair, the right-to-repair movement aims to empower consumers in their ability to “use, modify, and repair” a device “whenever, wherever, and however” they want. Here, the best design practices and remaining challenges of three industrial sectors – namely, consumer electronics, biomedical devices, and clothing industry – are investigated in light of the right-to-repair movement. Based on literature reviews and industrial surveys, a SWOT analysis is provided for each sector, and sustainable implications for product repair readiness are drawn. Concretely, recommendations to design, develop and sell products with right-to-repair in mind are given by sector. Future directions for a more quantitative assessment and implementation of design for product repair are discussed to ensure the augmentation of the circularity and sustainability performance of products.

Massive data are surrounding us in our daily lives. Urban mobility generates a very high number of complex data reflecting the mobility of people, vehicles and objects. Transport operators are primary users who strive to discover the meaning of phenomena behind traffic data, aiming at regulation and transport planning. This paper tackles the question "How to design a supportive tool for visual exploration of digital mobility data to help a transport analyst in decision making?” The objective is to support an analyst to conduct an ex post analysis of train circulation and passenger flows, notably in disrupted situations. We propose a problem-solution process combined with data visualisation. It relies on the observation of operational agents, creativity sessions and the development of user scenarios. The process is illustrated for a case study on one of the commuter line of the Paris metropolitan area. Results encompass three different layers and multiple interlinked views to explore spatial patterns, spatio-temporal clusters and passenger flows. We join several transport network indicators whether are measured, forecasted, or estimated. A user scenario is developed to investigate disrupted situations in public transport.

The representation of the product use context is a well established design practice in Engineering Design. Recently, design theory is studying the product interaction involving several cognitive aspects such as the possible conditions in which a wrong interaction occurs. The aim of this paper is to find a quantitative evidence of the causes of these misuses. In particular, this study focuses on the detection of bad design and biases.

In this paper, we propose a method that helps to the automatic detection of bad design and biases from patents. The method is based on an approach that defines syntactic rules to detect sentences containing these artifacts. These rules are defined based on an exploratory analysis of the explicit mention of “bad design” and “bias” and then, tested with multiple experiments on a sample of patents. The results give a first quantitative evidence of the presence of bad design and biases in patents and consequently of their importance in the design theory. In particular, it is provided a fine grain analysis of the linguistic structure of sentences containing these artifacts helping designers in detecting automatically them from patents.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the challenges in the servitization journey of product-centric firms from an ecosystem perspective, considering both intra-firm and inter-firm levels. Prior research addresses the challenges of servitization in many sectors from different perspectives. However, the majority of studies primarily focus on the provider of an offering. There is a lack of in-depth studies on analysing servitization challenges from the broader set of network actors including customers, suppliers, and sub-suppliers at the intra-firm and inter-firm levels. A multiple case study method was used to analyse five product-centric firms from different industries that were engaged in servitization. At intra- firm level, our analysis shows that ‘coordination’ is a major challenge for the provider, supplier, and sub-suppliers, and that ‘uncertainty’ and ‘risk’ is a major challenge for the provider, customer, and supplier. At inter-firm level, ‘partnership management’ found to be a most significant challenge for provider, customer, supplier, and sub-suppliers. The study contributes to the discussion of the relational view approach for servitization research.

The increased demand for customer-adapted product solutions shows an increasing trend of product variety, leading to an increased internal variety and therefore -costs. The concept of modularization provides apossible solution to this challenge by developing modular kits. Nevertheless, modularization methods to not lead to one individual modular kit, but to several alternatives. The decision of which alternative to implement can be crucial to the applying companys succes. During this decision-making both customer- and company perspectives need to be taken into account. This contribution is to present a simulation-based approach to support the decision making by using a model-based configuration system. Furthermore, as classical decision-making processes are based upon historical data, future aspects are usually not taken into account. In order to counteract this situation, this contribution intends to simulate as well future aspects impacting the modular product architecture. In this case, the simulation is used in order to evaluate the individual performances of a Design-for-Variety product architecture as opposed to a Design-for-Future-Robustness by applying this method to the example of customer-individual laser machines.

This paper proposes an approach for capital goods manufacturers to design Product-Service System (PSS) pilot projects by selecting appropriate products and customers. The authors conducted a single-case empirical study as a part of an ongoing action research project to maximise the learnings from a pilot project while minimising expenditure in extensive trial and error PSS solution testing. Two sets of criteria were elicited for product and customer selection, respectively, followed by a description of the ideal product and customer attributes for each of the three most common PSS archetypes.

With design methodologies, as Integrated Product Development, industry is continuously looking to improve their product development processes. Staying ahead concurrence forces them to deliver new and more complex products in shorter time. When it comes to fast delivery and requirement changes, product development can be inspired by agile methods. Although the application is difficult, the idea to implement these methods for development of products other than software comes out. To ease its implementation, this paper proposes to use IPD as a framework for agile product development.

The main design activity in engineering practice is to adapt existing designs or to create variants of existing products to new demands, which require a robust model against both parametric and topological changes. To design such a kind of model becomes a big challenge, especially in the development of structural components due to the number of load application points, variable load cases and restrictions from manufacturing technologies. Thus, the generative parametric design approach is applied to generating high dynamic product models, allowing them to be adjusted for changes feasibly.

Shame is an emotion most of us are well familiar with and has taken an increasing role in public discourse in the last couple of years. While design literature has seen a strong tradition for evoking positive emotions, shame seems to be somewhat neglected. As a step towards a more practical understanding of shame in design, this article combines design literature with studies from other disciplines in an attempt to give an overview of designers' current notion of shame, and discuss if and how this notion could be further explored into concepts and tools that may benefit future designers.

This paper reports a preliminary study (N=16) exploring vividness of visual mental imagery in product design ideation. Vividness was observed to vary across designers in the study, from high (68.8% of participants) to moderate (18.8%) to low (12.5%). A significant, strong positive relationship was found between vividness and creativity. Most participants reported using imagery always or sometimes, except one who has difficulties forming mental images. The results have several implications, including the possibility of other ‘ways of imagining’ not captured by visual reasoning models of design.

This paper discusses the issues involved with creating a Tangible Augmented Reality representation of a product so that it can be effectively and validly used to support the product design process. The development of a TAR representation entails building the physical model of the product, a digital model of the product, and developing interactions between the digital and physical representations. Different products have different user interactions, which makes developing TAR representation for products challenging since a new interaction needs to be mimicked. Challenges of developing TAR representations are discussed by investigating TAR representations of four consumer products: a space heater, a MP3 player, an electric can opener, and a seat assist cushion. The goal of TAR representations is to not only communicate the functionality of a product but also to improve the time efficiency of prototyping of physical products. Hence, having a good understanding of the user interactions that need to be developed and planning the representation for construction in the modeling software and AR software is crucial to making the process of developing a TAR representation efficient.

In recent years major companies such as Philips, H&M and Google have adopted a circular economy agenda to promote sustainability. Design consultancies such as IDEO has developed and promoted a circular design guide to help companies in this endeavour. However, designing for a circular economy often require design and reconfiguration of entire value chains – making the transition towards a circular economy rather difficult. In this paper we analyse a development project from the Danish island of Bornholm to investigate how to align diverse actors across the value chain in a process of co-creating systems for a circular economy. We combine design, value chain considerations and circular economy mindsets to informing negotiations of concerns among actors in the value chain.

Such strategical navigation might involve:

1. Staging initial spaces for dialogue with central actors from the value chain and initiates a process of mapping out their concerns

2. Staging a re-alignment space where the diverse actors can meet and interact to discuss and negotiate their concerns and their roles in the network

3. Design and enactment of a number of objects to faciliate negotiations

Presented is an approach to support margin allocation and management via a graph-theoretical network of assumptions. In contrast to the document-centric approach, the network captures assumptions dependencies, and enables an algorithmic process supporting margin allocation and management. Ultimately, this methodology is intended to assist decision-makers in managing assumptions and examining their impact on an architecture. Explicitly linking margins to assumptions allows to support mitigating their risk of invalidity. The approach is demonstrated with a conceptual aircraft design example.

The early (pre-requirement) stages of product development can provide relevant insights into the creative design process. At these stages, the communication of ideas during the prototyping process can serve as a rich source for information. In this paper, we attempt to document physical prototypes generated during the design process. We describe the design and preliminary testing of Protobooth Oulu: a system that can be used for documenting the process of prototyping products through capturing process output 'snapshots' in time at the early stages of product development. Our primary motivation is to facilitate documentation and reflection from an educational perspective. We tested the system during a course on digital fabrication in a FabLab environment, where ten teams documented their coursework over the course of six weeks. Managing to capture prototypes over time, analysis of the captured data showed evolution and major changes in the prototypes. Such data can be used for understanding the process of prototyping and consequently provide means to improve prototype and overall creative performance. We outline a future Protobooth system in terms of functionality.