This is a qualitative single case study of a geographically distributed student team that experienced a quite different graduate course, compared to previous year's. This was due to the restrictions placed upon them following coronavirus lockdowns. With already ongoing research, and continuous development of the course, the authors had documented individual reflections and identified patterns and behaviours that seemingly determined the quality of the end result, as well as the students expectations and experiences. Semi-structured interviews, surveys and the author's individual reflection notes were already in place as part of the larger research scope and when the student team during the covid-19 year showed unexpected performance and results, the authors decided to pause the larger research scope and focus on this unique single case and capture those learnings. Not knowing how the Covid-19 situation evolves and leaning on insights from previous years, as well as this unique year, the aim with this paper is to describe the unique Covid-19 year amd share knowledge that can help improve and evolve the development of this longlived collaborative graduate student course, and other similar distributed team contexts.

Strategic Research Agendas (SRA) bring to the research community a prospective and collective vision of a sector and are intended to provide directions for future research efforts. However, some promising innovative areas are not always foreseen in those documents, which raises the question of the relevance and adequacy of their coverage. While engineering design is often considered to translate SRA guidelines into product development, we believe it can also be of great help regarding the design of an SRA. In this paper, we will first address how to assess the scope of an SRA through a framework based on C-K theory, before exploring how to extend it, if need be. To answer those questions, we will examine a high-quality roadmap: the Electronic Components and Systems Strategic Research Agenda (ECS SRA). Our resulting method will provide us the means to assess SRA coverage and to ensure that interesting research areas are not forgotten unintentionally, in order to allow to a further enrichment of the document if needed.

A workflow for the design process of technological products was derived from a model that describes the interplay of lightweight design principles in the human locomotive system. This workflow is not yet ready to be used. In this paper, starting points for new research with the goal to enable the use of the workflow are discussed. Using the interplay of lightweight design principles of the human body in technical applications is approached because it is claimed that the interplay leads to an additional reduction of mass. This was proven for a technological system in a previous study. This study lead to a workflow to consider the interplay of the principles in the design process of the technological system. In this paper, the essential parts of this workflow are described in an abstract diagram as a calculation workflow. Subsequently, inputs and outputs of the workflow are identified. Then, the calculation workflow is integrated into the process of design. Afterwards, it is discussed that tension chording, which is one of the lightweight design principles, needs further investigation, because the interplay of the principles can only be used if the principles themselves are used.

In objected-oriented design, "smells" are symptoms of code violating design principles. When a deadline is looming, decisions can affect the long-term quality of a code or CAD. Given this and the similarities between object-oriented code and CAD models, this paper introduces a set of CAD smells. These smells are derived from a top-down review of potential CAD smells mapped against the reported code smells that violate abstraction, modularity, encapsulation, and hierarchy principles. This list was further reviewed considering CAD systems and specific examples (some illustrated in the paper).

Similitude theory helps engineers to investigate system properties and behaviour with scaling methods. The application of such methods reduces the time for product development and production of prototypes. With increasing component size, the impact of size effects and nonlinear phenomena becomes more important in reduced scale model testing. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the scaling methods and their applicability with regard to size effects and nonlinear phenomena as well as a procedure to support the selection of a suitable method for the scaling task of structures.

Design aesthetics are one of the most important factors affecting the attractiveness of industrial products. Psychological theory suggests that a moderate level of novelty and complexity yields pleasant feelings in users. A design that is initially surprising to consumers and acceptable over time requires aesthetic interest associated with its novelty and complexity. In this study, we formulated the perceived novelty and complexity of a closed contour shape. Based on this formulation, we developed “Hybrid-GAN,” which is a shape-generation system capable of generating a variety of shapes of arbitrary novelty and complexity. In a series of experiment, we obtained subjective evaluations of novelty and complexity, as well as beauty and interest, for the generated shape samples. The results indicated that our novelty and complexity formulations had significant positive correlations with subjective evaluations. The sum of the formulated novelty and complexity also had a significant positive correlation with interest. The results of this study are expected to be used to support the design of attractive shapes by providing feedback to designers regarding the degrees of novelty and complexity that users find most pleasant.

This research work presents a methodological support for the specification of complex products. This is achieved by developing a specification structure in a MBSE environment. The new method draws on success factors of complex product specification, principles of MBSE and the explanatory model of PGE – Product Generation Engineering. For evaluation, the method is applied within a student development project. A high applicability and the realization of novel synergies for coping with continuously increasing product complexity is demonstrated.

Our society is built on engineered systems. Engineers are becoming increasingly concerned with the sustainability of systems, particularly their ability to adapt to a changing world. Recently, there has been increased interest in exploring how design margins provide opportunities for a system change. There have been great developments in determining how design margins can absorb change at a system level, but it is still not clear how design margins might provide change opportunities at a decision variable level. In this paper, we show how system-level margins could be deconstructed to explore what change opportunities they may provide at a decision variable level. We also investigate how the coupling of functional requirements limits how system-level margins can be operationalized. Our analysis suggests that design margins can provide meaningful change opportunities at the decision variable level, but the mechanisms that produce these opportunities are complex. These insights lay the groundwork for future research on mapping and representing design margins in the context of system adaptability.

As design research expands its horizon, there has been a recent rise in studies on nontraditional designers. Previous studies have noted the positive effect of diversity in generating ideas. Among different sources of influence, peers outside the design team have been noted for their positive impact on the design process, yet the research on this topic is still in its early stages. Using qualitative data from 40 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the American and Finnish food and beverage industries, the current study examines their interactions with other SMEs, shedding light on the influence of peers on creating new design solutions. The findings suggest that peer companies can act as a frequent and impactful source of inspiration for product design ideas. The most prevalent forms of interaction were co-creating products, sharing information, and sharing ingredients. Furthermore, the interactions were voluntary, organic, and improvisational in nature, and physical proximity or previous connections often initiated the interactions. Taken together, a great number of peer influences contributed towards creative new solutions.

Roadmapping has been addressed as a management approach used to support strategic and innovation planning of organisations over recent decades. This paper introduces a new standpoint for addressing roadmapping through the application of service theories as a way for tackling the demand for the digitalisation of roadmapping. To this end, the concept of roadmapping as a service offer is developed and employed to analyse three customer perspectives of roadmapping: owners and sponsors, team members, and facilitators. Based on a literature review and interviews with roadmapping experts, customer jobs, pains, and gains are described for each of the perspectives. In the end, the paper provides insights for the understanding of the concept of roadmapping service and opens opportunities for further theoretical and empirical developments around this new path. These results are part of a broader research project exploring the digitalisation of roadmapping.

Empowerment is crucial for eliciting designer empathy. This research explores a distinctive integration of empathic modelling and role-play, termed Empathic Empowerment. Through a qualitative study, this research introduces a novel evaluation system, entitled the Empathic Empowerment Scale, designed to support the optimal level of designer empathy in a situated interaction drawn from habitual user experiences. The goal of this research is to empower designers to create the next generation of human-oriented solutions with enhanced inclusivity and social value, through practical experiences.

In product development, an automated generation of shape variations enables a rapid assessment of potentially appealing design directions. We present a framework for computing a product line-up of automotive body shapes based on spectral methods for mesh processing. We calculate the eigenspace projections of 3D vehicle meshes and identify the relevant style as well as content components based on the eigenvalues. The style of a model is then transferred to arbitrary prototype content car shapes, which allows for a rapid portfolio generation of various car types with minimal user interaction.

3D printing is widely touted as a game changer in medicine and surgery, paving the way for point-of-care production of personalised medical devices. Nonetheless, to date, most reported applications of 3D printing in healthcare are restricted to specific scenarios in a few surgical disciplines, and little research exists on how 3D printing can be deployed more systematically beyond pioneer surgical departments. To understand the potential for 3D printing at a hospital level, we report the results of an interview study in a French general hospital. We analyse the current use of 3D printing and estimate the potential for new applications. We explore what share of these applications could be internalised, and what would be the organisational implications and the key success factors for an internal 3D printing unit. We find a large untapped potential for internal production of 3D printed products, spanning a much broader range of applications and hospital departments than what currently exists in the hospital. We then discuss important criteria to develop in-house 3D printing.

Evidence-based practices play an essential role in the development of eHealth systems. Prior research has investigated the challenge of shared understanding between professionals from the fields of health sciences and design and has highlighted the need for effective alignment of development and research practices in eHealth. However, there is a limited understanding of epistemological differences between these fields and how professionals conceptualise evidence. In this paper, we investigate how healthcare and design professionals think about evidence and how they implement evidence practices in their work. We interviewed eight professionals and used reflexive thematic analysis to identify the challenges and strategies associated with their evidence practices. Our results identify five shared evidence practices between healthcare and design professionals: stakeholder-driven, process-driven, problem-driven, effect-driven, and solution-driven. These five evidence practices indicate opportunities for closer alignment of development and research practices among healthcare and design professionals and offer a basis to create a shared understanding of evidence between both fields.

During analysis in engineering design, systematic thinking errors - so-called cognitive biases - can lead to inaccurate understanding of the design problem. With a simplified version of the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses - ACH method and a simplified decision matrix, the confirmation bias in particular can be minimized. To evaluate this method, it was taught to experienced design engineers and mechanical engineering students. During the experimental evaluation the participants analysed a real technical problem. The procedures and results were compared with a previously conducted study with the same task. The design engineers have not changed their approaches and could not further improve their analysis success. The students profited considerably from the training. They have mentioned twice as much supporting evidence and six times as much contradicting evidence through the training indicating a more extensive analysis. As a result, the students showed significantly fewer signs of confirmation bias than without training. The findings suggest that debiasing strategies should be introduced early in engineering design education.

The use of sensor networks (SNs) on the surface or the inside of large-scale components allows the continuous acquisition of data on the applied loads and their structural integrity. A lot of publications on SN's system reliability deal with this topic from a hardware- or a data- and energy-oriented viewpoint. To give an overview on the state of the art in the field of reliability-oriented concept-optimization of SNs, a Systematic Literature Review is conducted. The found literature is used to investigate how different models combine the different viewpoints to analyse the system reliability. By analysing the results regarding the used reliability indicators and methods to assess the system reliability from the different viewpoints, it can be observed that most publications deal with the accuracy, loss and delay of data as well as the energy consumption in SNs. Few publications use common modelling methods like reliability block diagrams or Markov chains with a focus on the hardware reliability. Furthermore, none of the found publications combines the data, hardware and energy perspective and uses them to optimize a SN regarding its reliability from all three viewpoints.

Eco-Design Strategies lead to both enhanced environmental sustainability and product differentiation, which, however, takes place only if observers recognize and value these advantages. To study this aspect, a sample of 40 product pictures has been administered to 12 subjects with experience in eco-design. They were asked to evaluate whether one or more Eco-Design Strategies (in Vezzoli and Manzini's version) were implemented in each depicted product. The outcome of the evaluation was an overall fair agreement. Useful information for eco-design is inferred from nuances of the results.

This work investigates the application of origami as the underlying principle to realize a novel 3D printed hand orthosis design. Due to the special property of some origami to become rigid when forming a closed surface, the orthosis can be printed flat to alleviate the most of the post-processing, and at the same time provide rigid support for the immobilized limb in the folded state. The contributions are the origami-based hand orthosis design and corresponding computational design method, as well as lessons learned regarding the application of origami for the hand orthosis design.

Face masks are currently considered essential devices that people must wear today and in the near future, until the COVID-19 pandemic will be completely defeated through specific medicines and vaccines. Such devices are generally made of thermoplastic polymers, as polypropylene and polyethylene and are single use products. Even if in this period the sanitary emergency must have the maximum priority, the world society should not completely forget the environmental problem that are causing more and more obvious climate changes with correlated damages to ecosystems and human health. Despite the well-known correlation among anti-COVID protective equipment (or more generally medical devices) and environmental issues, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and eco-design-based studies in this field is very scarce. The present study aims to derive the most important environmental criticalities of such products, by using LCA and product circularity indicators of five different common masks. The final aim is to provide eco-design guidelines, useful to design new face masks by preventing negative impact on the environment.

Novel product concepts are often down-selected in favour of the incremental development of available designs. This can be attributed to the fact that for the development of a new product, simulations and analysis based on high-fidelity CAD models are required, which are expensive to create. To solve this problem, the use of a function model (FM) as intermediate step between ideation and embodiment is suggested.

The approach has been examined in a case study with an aerospace company for the development of a turbine rear assembly, using multiple workshops and interviews with practitioners from the company. A multitude of novel solutions, even extending the functionality of the legacy design, were captured. The FM approach proved to support the representation, analysis, and configuration of 102 different concepts. Although supported by the FM model, the embodiment still showed to be a bottle neck for further development. The subsequent interviews with practitioners showed that the benefits of the approach were seen, but experienced as too complex.

Further work will concern a more systematic connection between the FM and CAD model, in order to automate of the embodiment process.