Multi-functional design has high potential to overcome e.g. increasing weight and costs of products. However, the possible solution space for integrating functions is hardly manageable. This paper presents an approach to assist in the identification of multi-functional approaches. Therefore, hybrid design principles are developed that are combinable to complex structures including specific manufacturing routes. By this, multi-functional solutions can be provided on different resolutions in order to identify the most promising approach and position for the integration of additional functions.

Currently, inconsistent software versions lead to massive challenges for many car manufacturers. This is partly because within the product lifecycle management and the software engineering process, there is no correct handling of software versions for the “data entry” (installation of software on the ECU) of the vehicles. Furthermore, there are currently major challenges for many vehicle manufacturers to ensure transparency, integrity and full traceability of SW data status vis-à-vis the legislator. To counteract these challenges, new solutions in the field of vehicle engineering are to be developed based on a new platform called “CarEngChainNet” and Blockchain technology. On the basis of the “CarEngChainNet” platform, new main and sub-chain chains will be developed that allow tamper-proof SW data management (Peer to Peer and crypto technology) across the entire PLM chain with new methods such as model-based systems engineering of the requirement, function and integration of the SW components in different areas of vehicle development. The aim is to develop new transmission chains of vehicles with individually packaged software artefacts (e.g. ECU software) that can be securely transmitted from server to server into the vehicle.

Industrial Data Analytics needs access to huge amounts of data, which is scattered across different IT systems. As part of an integrated reference kit for Industrial Data Analytics, there is a need for a data backend system that provides access to data. This system needs to have solutions for the extraction of data, the management of data and an analysis pipeline for those data. This paper presents an approach for this data backend system.

Digital Twins are one of the most trending topics. However, there are still open issues in the development of Digital Twins. One of these impediments is formulating a clear and valid value proposition of a Digital Twin. Therefore, this paper presents a novel business modelling approach for Digital Twins. Based on a literature review and an academic case study, different business modelling approaches and techniques were systematically compared, selected and adjusted in order to develop a new framework suitable for describing the value of Digital Twins. It consists of 10 steps – (1) describe a basic development concept of the DT, (2) identify the customer segments, needs and pain points, (3) derive a value proposition (4) identify revenue streams and values created, (5) identify key activities, (6) resources needed, and (7) necessary partners. (8) Adapt the organization to fit the business model and (9) evaluate the cost structure of the project. In the end, document and communicate the new business model (10). Each step is supported by auxiliary methods, tools and procedures. The approach was applied to a scientific case study. In an initial evaluation the overall applicability and usefulness of the approach were confirmed.

The environment for powertrain production system engineers is changing radically. This initial prescriptive study proposes a systems engineering framework based on two previous case studies which are under review for publication concerning design of battery plants. The framework was developed based on ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 standard using Concept of Operations and Model-Based Systems Engineering in a workshop setting, with a focus on visualisation to understand the practical and emotional needs of the humans in the system. The framework was validated by twelve senior project members.

The challenges of the Anthropocene require a deep transformation of the world's economic organization. In order to manage such a change, it is necessary to have a systemic vision of the resources, processes at stake and their interdependencies. One possible approach to modeling part of this complexity is biophysical flow accounting. One of the challenges is to involve populations in participatory processes. It is therefore important to understand the systemic effects. However, biophysical accounting tools remain too complicated.

This is why we have designed serious games to present the issues in a simple way, to articulate them with concrete experiences already lived by citizens and to take a step back, by mobilizing their participation, their emotions and the discussions.

The first game was designed to show the geographical transfer of pressure through the description of the steps leading to the purchase of a chicken, starting with the vegetable culture allowing to feed it.

The second game was designed to show the competition of use between resources. Designed as a board game, it also involves reflection on the cooperative and competitive aspects of many societal situations.

Advancements in prototyping technologies – haptics and extended reality – are creating exciting new environments to enhance stakeholder and user interaction with design concepts. These interactions can now occur earlier in the design process, transforming feedback mechanisms resulting in greater and faster iterations. This is essential for bringing right-first-time products to market as quickly as possible.

While existing feedback tools, such as speak-aloud, surveys and/or questionnaires, are a useful means for capturing user feedback and reflections on interactions, there is a desire to explicitly map user feedback to their physical prototype interaction. Over the past decade, several hand-tracking tools have been developed that can, in principle, capture product user interaction.

In this paper, we explore the capability of the LeapMotion Controller, MediaPipe and Manus Prime X Haptic gloves to capture user interaction with prototypes. A broad perspective of capability is adopted, including accuracy as well as the practical aspects of knowledge, skills, and ease of use. In this study, challenges in accuracy, occlusion and data processing were elicited in the capture and translation of user interaction into design insights.

A digital twin is the mapping of a physical twin between hybrid spaces. The lifecycle of digital and physical twins occurs through the concepts of foetal, child, and adult twins. This technology can be used to assist clients and designers with real-time data. The use of digital twin technology in architectural design can be realised at various stages, from design to operation. Designers will be able to gain knowledge of the past, present, and future using this technology. This will reveal possible design scenarios. In this study, a hypothetical scenario is designed, in which designers build a building while already having a digital twin template. To do this, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is used as a reference model for digital twins, along with the fidelity levels of digital twins and the level of detail-development of BIM. When designers want to design a new project related to their predecessors, they already use the same type of digital twin-building portfolio they can use for their new design. A digital twin will help optimise the new process. Therefore, the digital twin of a building with a similar building type can be used to extract relevant data for the design process.

The definition of initial requirements in the early phase of product development is characterised as a decision process under highest uncertainties. Studies show that projects often deviate from their planned goals or even fail due to ill-defined requirements. Despite the importance and criticality of this task, a detailed description and risk-oriented explanation is missing in the product development literature. The goal of this paper is to develop an explanation model/frame which establishes a link between the development context and an appropriate procedure for the initial requirements definition based on general risk treatment strategies. In a first step, risk-driving context factors with high influence on this task are identified. Then two case studies are compared to analyse the interrelations between their context factors and the applied risk treatment strategies that are implemented in their procedures for defining initial requirements.

Combinational creativity is a significant element of design in supporting designers to generate creative ideas during the early phases of design. There exists three driven approaches to combinational creativity: problem-, similarity- and inspiration-driven. This study provides further insights into the three combinational creativity driven approaches, exploring which approach could lead to ideas that are more creative in the context of practical product design. The results from a case study reveal that the problem- driven approach could lead to more creative and novel ideas or products compared with the similarity- and inspiration-driven approach. Products originating from the similarity- and inspiration-driven approach are at comparable levels. This study provides better understanding of combinational creativity in practical design. It also delivers benefits to designers in improving creative idea generation, and supports design researchers in exploring future ideation methods and design support tools employing the concept of 'combination'.

Knowledge is a crucial factor in state-of-the-art product development. It is often provided by stakeholders from divers disciplinary and individual backgrounds and has to be integrated to create competitive products. Still, it is not fully understood, how knowledge is generated, transformed, transferred and integrated in complex product development processes. To investigate the dynamic interrelations between involved stakeholders, applied knowledge types and related artefacts, researchers at the TU Berlin conducted and evaluated a student experiment to study basic phenomena of development projects. In relation to research methods and instruments applied in this experiment, various improvement opportunities were identified. In this paper, the experimental setting and its results are critically analysed from a social science perspective in order to generate improved research design. Based on the results of this analysis, a first set of methods and instruments from social sciences are identified that can be applied in further experiments. The goal is to develop a methodological toolbox that can be used to approach research on knowledge dynamics in product development.

Therapy in early childhood is facilitated through toys and play. While mainstream toys are designed for children, therapeutic toys need to satisfy requirements from clinicians, caregivers, and children. The study presented in this paper investigated the challenges that 22 international toy designers encounter during the design process and whether support is required when developing products for speech and language therapy, through a mixed-method approach. Results show that considerable challenges are encountered during the early design stages. Nonetheless, the toy design process remains unsupported, while no support is available for designers to consider therapeutic needs. Based on the feedback received, eleven requirements were identified upon which a user-centred design support framework was proposed to assist toy designers during the task clarification stage, taking into account the affordances that therapeutic toys should have without inhibiting the creative process.

Maturity assessments of technology is a crucial process to identify and acquire compatible technologies for a system’s development. However, being a complex and highly subjective process, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported cost overruns and schedule slippages through the years. This study provides a unique Weighted Technology Readiness Level (WTRL) framework which utilizes cardinal factors to ascertain the maturity, schedule and trend of NASA’s 7 Technologies based on their maturity time. The framework utilizes MCDM methods to determine the cardinal complexity of each TRL. It allows the assimilation of other cardinal factors using a simple, open structure to track the overall technology maturity and readiness. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance of tailored TRL frameworks to determine the accurate cardinal coefficient of the said technology and the inferences derived otherwise. It eliminates several limitations of previous frameworks and compares against their performance using a verified statistical representation of processed data.

Complexity of products and systems is increasing through digitalization, interdisciplinarity as well as high technology maturity and new business models. In consequence, new product development (NPD) projects need to manage and satisfy a large number of requirements from a broad range of stakeholders. Yet, NPD projects are often delayed due to requirement changes. In this paper, a new method for analyzing requirement change propagation is presented. The method is based on the assessment of requirement interrelations structured in a requirements structure matrix by a modified page-rank algorithm. By the method, a high number of strongly interrelated requirements can be analyzed in an efficient manner. Additionally, higher-level interrelations as well as the relative weights of requirements are also incorporated in the analysis. Hereby, an efficient holistic approach towards the analysis of requirement change propagation is proposed.

Ad-hoc systems are socio-technical systems emerging in response to dynamic problematic situations. These systems form when situation systems interact with respondent systems organized by human agents using elements available in the situation and assets brought in from outside the situation. The immediacy of formation, fast evolution, and short lifecycles of ad-hoc systems intertwine design, implementation, and operation activities in complex ways not addressed by current approaches to Systems Engineering focusing on more sedate environments. The proposed framework presents a language for classifying fundamental building blocks of ad-hoc systems – single-agent intervention, staging, readiness, and development systems. Further classification according to the physical location of agents and assets relative to situations generates 16 system classes on the 4x4 matrix of Ad-hoc Systems Gameboard, which is a helpful tool for managing the evolution of system portfolios. Combining the Gameboard with mapping the systems onto the PSI matrix reveals additional relationships and evolution patterns, opening up promising directions to address the challenge of designing, planning, and implementing interventions in complex situations.

A Contradiction Matrix of TRIZ that classifies problems to solve as contradictions of features is an effective framework of knowledge management for problem solving. The features, however, may have a problem of completeness because they may not cover contradictions about all physical phenomena. In addition, rigidly structured Contradiction Matrix may have a problem of searchability because a relevant contradiction may not be properly searched if a recorder and a retriever describe it differently. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a semistructured contradiction matrix using not TRIZ features but physical quantities in SI unit. To enable not only exact match but also partial match in searching for relevant contradictions, dimensional similarity and qualitative value similarity of physical quantity and similarity between contradictions are defined. The proposed method is implemented as software in Python and contradictions are described in XML and stored in a semistructured matrix. From the result of similarity calculation between stored contradictions, possible effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed.

Design is a highly nonlinear chaotic dynamic process with many possible solutions, which requires enormous knowledge for designers. This paper investigates how environment-based design (EBD) methodology can help designers use only necessary knowledge for their creativity based on three methods: information search, knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. The methods are applied in an aircraft pylon design, which is evaluated by two aerospace design specialists. The paper discussed the different roles of EBD for novice and expert designers in regard to overcoming emotion and knowledge barriers to achieving designer creativity.

How can we design and engineer research that leads to the development and effective implementation of complex healthcare interventions? We advocate for a systems design-based approach when initiating clinical research to anticipate the proposition of complex interventions. Using cognitive care as an example, we investigate how hybrid design-inspired methodologies can promote organisational effectiveness and how strong clinical evidence can support successful conceptualisation and uptake of novel interventions into routine clinical practice.

Testing prototypes with intended end users is critical to the design process. There is limited research on testing prototypes with certain types of end users, specifically children for toy products. Additionally, prototypes evolve in fidelity throughout a project, adding to the complexity in developing best practices for prototype testing. This paper analyzes children's understanding of physical prototypes at various levels of fidelity throughout a university semester-long design project developing wooden toys. Through analyzing students’ feedback on their prototype testing sessions, aspects of the prototypes that aid or inhibit children from understanding both form and function are uncovered. These aspects relate to Norman's principles of interaction and their inclusion in prototypes, specifically mental models, signifiers, and affordances. This paper suggests to include these principles in prototypes early in development to guide the user during testing. The goal of this research is to be a resource for those developing products for children, as well as adding knowledge around prototyping testing at various levels of fidelity.

As the demands for new complex products/services increase, leading to strict constraints on budget and time-to-market, it is hard to learn from experience and improve practice. Improvement can be exercised in all aspects contributing to project management: the skill set of project personnel, the project structure, and the development process. People are the key asset of the project. Identifying the key participants in a project whose role is influential is important for improving the project's success. These people can receive support, remove their burdens, make sure their communication channels work well, etc. This paper offers a multilayer network-based method to examine an actor's influence in a project while combining two additional organizational key aspects: products and processes. Considering these three aspects together allows for a more informed evaluation of the actors' influence on the project. Using the insight from graph theory, we gain indicators related to each network actor. The influence of the actors in a multidimensional network makes it possible to present a clearer picture to decision-makers in the organization to make better decisions related to increasing the effectiveness of the development project.