Due to the complexity of financial products, consumers with low financial literacy are left behind. However, few practical studies investigated the impact of digital advisory systems to improve customer experience. Configuration systems, as the most popular expert systems, have never been applied as a financial tool. In this study, we explore the application of configuration systems to educate consumers in achieving their financial goals. The results highlight multiple benefits from using the configurator, including greater financial literacy and improved individual financial decision-making.

This study provides insights into the capabilities and performance of generative AI, specifically ChatGPT, in engineering design. ChatGPT participated in a 48-hour hackathon by instructing two participants who acted out its instructions, successfully designing and prototyping a NERF dart launcher that finished second among six teams. The paper highlights the potential and limitations of generative AI as a tool for ideation, decision-making, and optimization in engineering tasks, demonstrating the practical applicability of generating viable design solutions under real-world constraints.

The rapid development of 3D printing technology has an impact on all aspects of modern manufacturing, design and society. However, the home use of 3D printers is still limited by the difficulty in deploying the software and the technology which both need professional understanding and training. How to enable non-technical home users to use 3D printers without the need for training, becomes an urgent problem for both academics and the industry. This paper is concerned in an investigation into home use of 3D printers, their needs and preferences, their impacts on the interaction design of 3D printing. First, a questionnaire survey supported by 127 non-technical users is conducted to understand their preferences on several key steps of the 3D printing procedure. Then, we integrate the survey results into the interaction design process to improve the usability of the 3D printing software. Finally, the advantage of our implementation is tested via the user satisfaction and feedback towards the post-use period. Our design project shows a simple method to extend 3D printing interactive software to non-technical users, and pushes forward the landscape of the home use of 3D printers.

This article investigates human geometry in design, allowing exploration of unknown geometries in Paralympic sports equipment. By creating a configuration map exploring the solution-space, optimal sit-ski seating positions–in the sense of performance and ergonomics–can efficiently be found for individual athletes. A physical prototype was developed, and an experiment was designed to identify changes in performance due to different geometries. The design method and application make it possible to translate critical angles onto geometries, and test individuals for optimal work ergonomics.

Facing a rising competitive pressure, manufactures create advantages when they are able to offer customer-specific products to the conditions of a mass production article. Traditional configurators support the creation of personalized products from the elements of a modular product system, but are based on a pre-defined set of rules. The model based approach changes the environment of configuration from static configuration rules to the dependencies defined within the product's system model. So, by regarding target quantities of the user, the configurator identifies the optimal variant.

Truss structures are a stiff, economical, and efficient lightweight design, the limiting factor of these structures are usually the load transfer elements. This paper presents an analytical design method for optimized adhesive tubular lap joints between CFRP tubes and aluminium inserts. The analytically optimized design agrees very well with the numerical simulations and experimental results. Although the experiments show a highly non-linear behaviour, where a linear elastic correlation is expected, the total load capacity is only reached when the adhesive is fully plasticised.

While volume-driven industries such as automotive are characterized by a high degree of data backflow across all production cycles, there is still a certain residue in the planning and construction of process plants. This is firstly due to the high proportion of customer-specific requirements and secondly to the significant amount of value added on site during construction. To handle recurring project-specific process plants as time- and cost-efficiently as possible, optimal information exchange among contractors of various disciplines and the plant developer is a prerequisite. For this purpose, a holistic digital representation of the plant is created, which consolidates all relevant information in one place serving as a foundation of multiple digital twins. An approach to identify and define relevant information depending on their subsequent use is developed. On this basis, a framework is proposed to enable a multipliable BOM-based automatic definition of information backflow to instantiate digital representations in parallel to the planning and construction process. Furthermore, project-specific contextual information will be captured and referenced in a structured form preventing their loss for subsequent similar projects.

The Pugh Method of Controlled Convergence is evaluated based on social choice theory, both from an axiomatic basis, and by examining all possible cases of attribute ranks for a range of numbers of alternatives and numbers of attributes. The evaluation shows that, for a typical Pugh application, concept selection varies with the arbitrary choice of datum or is simply incorrect in about one-third of the cases. While there are merits to the iteration steps and creation of new alternatives within the Pugh method, a simpler and more expressive concept ranking procedure can give far superior results.

In this paper, I identify issues that arose in a recent pilot project in which designers contributed to the construction field. The project was led by an overall responsible innovation goal for sustainability impact: contribute to global CO2 reduction. The innovation solution being developed to achieve this goal was a sustainable renovation concept intended for upscaling. In this pilot project, it was applied to a social housing block of 12 apartments. The designers sought to help align technical solutions with the residents’ later use of their homes, because the latter is an important factor in achieving a zero-energy outcome. The paper identifies four issues that arose in the collaboration between design and construction and installation professionals. The issues are goal translation, goal dissipation, the contested service interface and the contested responsiveness to residents. I argue that designers can engage and contribute through design intervention and applying care in the collaboration, in order to support the success of responsible innovation.

The proposed methodological framework concerns axiomatic theory fusion (ATF) of non-additive engineering design theories. ATF includes seven steps: (i) semantic discretization of the composite theories, (ii) deriving epistemological entities by logical/semantic analysis, (iii) establishing and representation of relations among all relevant epistemological entities, (iv) combining the inter- theoretical epistemological entities of the component theories, (v) deriving propositions based on the combined set of epistemological entities, (vi) transcription of the epistemological entities and propositions into a textual/visual theory description, and (vii) validation of the resultant theory in application contexts. The proposed framework makes ATF an effective, content independent methodology for fusing component theories, no matter if they are descriptive, explanatory, predictive or controlling in nature. ATF methodology requires professional comprehension and rigor from the researchers. It is necessary to justify the logical correctness and practical validity of the target theory in the specific application context.

The digitalization of the Industry is one of the megatrends taking place, but many companies struggle to follow this trend. The main reason is the absence of simple solutions for the integration of sensory functions, which are applicable to the existing system. Therefore, this paper discusses the aspects of simplicity in the context of integrating sensory functions into existing systems, to support the development of digitalized products.

Two general requirements can be formulated for a solution to be applicable simple: The first requirement is affected by the product structure. The solution must affect the least possible amount of modules and must not interfere with the interfaces of the modular platform. The second requirement is affected by the effort to model the behaviour of the desired information and the possible data a sensory function is delivering. The effort to develop a reliable solution has to be compared with the commercial potential of the solution.

To consider the mentioned requirements, the paper explains three approaches to assess the simplicity of solutions on an example of the desired monitoring of the functions of a rotary plug valve.

The functional analysis of technical systems is an important part of the design process. To further improve the design process, especially the functional analysis, it must not be viewed as a monodisciplinary process. To this end, cognitive factors such as the aha-experience must also be included in studies of analysis processes to a greater extent. This paper investigates the relationship between the occurrence of aha-experiences and the correctness of solutions in the analysis of a technical system. An aha-experience is a strong feeling of subjective certainty that accompanies the cognitive process of suddenly finding a previously unknown solution. For this purpose, a study on the functional analysis was evaluated. The results show that many identified subfunctions of the system under investigation were identified with an aha-experience and that these subfunctions are more often correct. The results also suggest that aha-experiences occur more often among students than among experienced design engineers. Especially among students, a positive relation of aha-experiences on the correctness of the identified subfunction can be seen. This offers potential for further investigations to make aha-experiences useful in design methods.

Studies of design activity have been dominantly reporting on different aspects of the design process, rather than the content of designing. The aim of the presented research has been the development and application of an approach for a fine-grain analysis of the design content communicated between designers during the team conceptual design activities. The proposed approach builds on an engineering design ontology as a foundation for the content categorisation. Two teams have been studied using the protocol analysis method. The coded protocols offered fine-grain descriptions of the content communicated at different points in the design session and enabled comparison of teams’ approaches and deriving some generalisable findings. For example, it has been shown that both teams focused primarily on the use of the developed product and the operands within the technical process, in order to generate new technical solutions and initial component design. Moreover, teams exhibit progress from abstract to concrete solutions as the sessions proceeded and focused on the functional requirements towards the end of the sessions.

This paper presents an exploratory case study where video-based pose estimation is used to analyse human motion to support data-driven design. It provides two example use cases related to design. Results are compared to ground truth measurements showing high correlation for the estimated pose, with an RMSE of 65.5 mm. The paper exemplifies how design projects can benefit from a simple, flexible, and cost-effective approach to capture human-object interactions. This also entails the possibility of implementing interaction and body capturing in the earliest stages of design, at minimal effort.

The Life Cycle Energy Optimisation (LCEO) methodology aims at finding a design solution that uses a minimum amount of cumulative energy demand over the different phases of the vehicle's life cycle, while complying with a set of functional constraints. This effectively balances trade-offs, and therewith avoids sub-optimal shifting between the energy demand for the cradle-to-production of materials, operation of the vehicle, and end-of-life phases. The present work describes the extension of the LCEO methodology to perform holistic product system optimisation. The constrained design of an automotive component and the design of a subset of the processes which are applied to it during its life cycle are simultaneously optimised to achieve a minimal product system life cycle energy. A subset of the processes of the end-of-life phase of a vehicle's roof are modeled through a continuous formulation. The roof is modeled as a sandwich structure with its design variables being the material compositions and the thicknesses of the different layers. The results show the applicability of the LCEO methodology to product system design and the use of penalization to ensure solution feasibility.

In recent years, more and more technical systems dispose of some form of intelligence which allows to control and diagnose the processes and states in such systems. One important prerequisite for both control and diagnosis is monitoring, i.e. a systematic observation, surveillance or recording of entities of a technical product or its surroundings by any technical means. Current investigations were able to clarify that the design of a technical system can ease the control and diagnosis of this system. The same is true for monitoring; this fact will be demonstrated in this paper on the example of a research vehicle which is intended to foster the development of mapping systems and algorithms. In a sense, the main objective of this vehicle is also a kind of monitoring. Due to its unique design, this vehicle is able to navigate on all kind of terrains. It is equipped with several forms of sensors, which are consciously mounted at certain positions on the vehicle in order to allow a detailed detection of the surroundings. The investigation, how design can ease monitoring, was supported by a well-known model of product concretization and concrete insights could be found on all levels.

Various tools for participatory design approach have been developed to support users to engage design process. Doll scenario is proposed as a generative tool for letting participants make and enact scenarios. However, suitable context to practice doll scenario is unclear in comparison with other tools using scenario. Therefore, our overall objective is to increase understanding of characteristics of making scenario in two different ways of expression; with doll and storyboard. We developed a doll scenario method, doll staging. The tool was evaluated in comparison to storyboard at a workshop which is a part of a new product development project in a corporate. The workshop was evaluated by semi-structured interviews with the participants and observations of the workshop and design outcome. The result suggests that doll staging allows participants to think from users’ perspective in developing new idea. These findings provides new direction to choose scenario based design tools according to objective or context of design project. We also discuss potentials and research directions to use tools for developing scenario in corporate contexts.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has a large potential to revolutionize the manufacturing industry, yet the printing parameters and part design have a profound impact on the robustness of the printing process as well as the resulting quality of the manufactured components. To control the printing process, a substantial number of parameters is measured while printing and used primarily to control and adjust the printing process in-situ. The question raised in this paper is how to benefit from these data being gathered to gain insight into the print process stability. The case study performed included the analysis of data gathered during printing 22 components. The analysis was performed with a widely used Random Forest Classifier. The study revealed that the data did contain some detectable patterns that can be used further in assessing the quality of the printed component, however, they were distinct enough so that in case the test and train sets were comprised of separate components the predictions’ result was very poor. The study gives a good understanding of what is necessary to do a meaningful analytics study of manufacturing data from a design perspective.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) have emerged as a key concept to meet the societal and market trends of increasing customer needs through the entire life-cycle. Unfortunately, several companies are struggling with getting revenues from service investments and translating 'real needs' to design improvements. The demand of the designer to go beyond the Voice of the Customer (VoC) is evident. This paper aims to map the interventions proposed by research in the area of PSS and VoC. Using a systematic mapping approach, the research domain was analyzed with regards to context and interventions. The results show a progressive development in the research area with a focus on the specification and realization of needs. A gap exists in connecting the engineers with 'real needs' and integrating the customer as a natural part of the entire development cycle of a PSS. By performing a systematic mapping, future research can be more focused and hopefully increasing its impact.

Design education needs to be continually investigated and improved to stay relevant. The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a leading university focused on all elements of technology-based design. The overarching motivation of our research is to enhance design education curriculum at SUTD. Our research objectives are (1) to understand how design competencies are implemented in SUTD's curriculum and courses (2) to identify gaps in teaching of design competencies at SUTD. We analyse competencies in 28 design courses at SUTD. We develop the visualization and analysis of 12 skills grouped under two abilities from the Design competency assessment framework. Our main contributions are: (1) We present an approach to map the design competencies that are taught across design courses at a university with an interdisciplinary curriculum, (2) We present an approach for mapping design competency progression based on ITAE (Introduced, Taught, Assessed, Expected) categorization, (3) Based on the above, we provide preliminary findings on two skill gaps in the curriculum, substantiated with insights from interviews with course coordinators.