Stakeholder perspective taking is a critical skill in early-stage problem exploration and framing. We examined stakeholder perspective taking within an early-stage design team of engineers at NASA to begin to understand in what ways and under what conditions designers adopt stakeholder perspectives in the context of professional engineering organizations. Our findings identify a spectrum of perspective taking during problem framing deliberations that ranges from (1) fully taking the stakeholder's point of view (POV), (2) interpreting the stakeholder's POV using the designer's POV, (3) implanting the stakeholder's POV into the designer's POV, to (4) fully taking the designer's own POV. We also identify and describe conditions that appeared to encourage or hinder perspective taking in this setting. These findings are significant because they suggest ways to gauge and encourage the skill of stakeholder perspective taking among professional engineers working on real-world design challenges with societal implications.

This paper explores the interplay of feedback principles in design and systems science. From their roots in engineering, biology, and economics, it investigates intersections between design, cybernetics and servomechanisms. The synthesis emphasizes the need for considering feedback in anticipating unintended consequences and proposes an integrative view reconciling fundamental assumptions from the different fields through simulation. This holistic approach underscores the pivotal role of feedback in understanding and addressing complex phenomena, such as rebound effects, in design science.

Prototypes are a critical aid in the product development process, allowing designers translate concepts to reality. However, the execution of prototypes depends heavily on the designer experience, evidenced in research in the need of creating design support tools to establish a standard for a prototyping effort. To improve on these findings, the Proto-Arch is introduced as a partial result of creating a standard for executing prototypes in each product development phase based on the prototyping roles and purposes. Proto-Arch defines the prototyping activities in the embodiment design phase.

While solar photovoltaics are projected to grow, major financial barriers exist that impede installation. Soft costs (human-driven costs) can account for over half of total project costs and are often simplified in typical models. We use the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's “Cost of Renewable Energy Spreadsheet Tool” to quantify uncertainty of three soft cost inputs and their influence on the output cost of energy using variance-based sensitivity indices. We then suggest how the development process and model can be redesigned to represent the complexities of this socio-technical system.

There is an inherent tension between functional descriptions of products and structural descriptions. Traditionally system architecture combine the two, by mapping system elements to functions. In this process fundamental decisions about the embodiment of a product are often taken without proper scrutiny. Axiomatic design advocates a zigzag between functional decomposition and system break down. While this approach makes sense for ab initio design these are rare and most products are developed incrementally., This paper takes up the idea of a functional reference architecture.

Conventional functional modelling advocates a hierarchical decomposition into sub function. By contrast FRAs decompose function into function chain, i.e., dependent sequences of sub function required to carry out an overall function. This allows the identification of common sub-functions in different chains, and thereby generates a lattice structure of functions rather than a tree. This enables a detailed but solution neutral description of the product.

This concept has attracted interest in industry but does not have many tools and methods to develop FRA. The paper discusses some of the areas that require research

Tension chording is a lightweight design principle in the human motion system. More muscles than necessary are available in this system to generate motion. By using these redundant muscles the principle contributes to the lightweight design of the motion segments. The lightweight design benefits of the principle for technical structures loaded with bending torques were shown in prior studies. This paper presents a pilot study on lightweight design benefits of using tension chording for torsion loaded structures.

Agile approaches are increasingly being used in appropriate use cases for the development of mechatronic systems.In the process of implementing agile elements in the development processes, the question of the success of the transformation often arises. In order to support the agile transition in measuring process improvement, a framework was developed that evaluates the success of the implementation process by means of interviews at 4 maturity levels in the transformation. The method was evaluated in 3 use cases. On this basis, continuous adaptations can be made to the implementation process.

Optimization-driven design offers advantages over traditional experience-based mechanical design. As an example, topology optimization can be a powerful tool to generate body shapes for Additive Manufacturing (AM). This is helpful, when (1) load paths are non-intuitive due to complex design domains or boundary conditions, or (2) the design process is to be automated to minimize effort associated with experience-based design. However, practically relevant boundary conditions are often difficult to put into a formal mathematical language to, for example, either feed it into a topology optimization algorithm, or provide precise quantitative criteria for CAE-supported manual design. This paper presents a survey of three industry use cases and identifies three types of requirements: the first can be directly cast into parts of an optimization problem statement (∼ 40%), the second is considered indirectly by adapting the optimization problem without explicit reference to the requirement (∼ 20%), and the third is only assessed after the design is finalized (∼ 40%). For categories 2 and 3 we propose directions of improvement to support formulating complex design tasks as unambiguous design problems.

This paper is contextualized in a research project that aims to create a new paradigm to support the design process, substituting the sequential nature of design process models by a flexible structure. To implement this paradigm, we must identify the final and intermediate results of the design process, such as documents, models, artefacts, among others. However, design research is wide and multidisciplinary, resulting in non-uniformity of the terminology across research communities, what hinders the results identification by means of a literature review. This paper aims to identify the terms employed by different research communities to refer to the intermediate and final results of the design process, structuring synonym terms across research communities and establishing how those terms interrelate in the design ontology. Using literature review, the following terms were analysed: design objects, elements, deliverables, entities, information, components, data, and artefacts. The results provide a holistic view of how the terms are employed throughout research communities, supporting the creation of search strings and pointing out opportunities for improving the design ontology.

In the course of the IPD International Summer School, two teams addressed the topic of devel-oping an integrated product, with the constraint of it being joyful for the user. One team has chosen an agile development approach whereas the second team approached it in a plan-driven manner. With the starting conditions for both teams being equal, a direct comparison between the agile and plan-driven development approach can be undertaken. The different courses of action are displayed and the different ways on how to approach the topic of achieving joy for the user are outlined. The results as well as the challenges associated with each approach are dis-cussed and an outlook on the transferability to other fields is given.

This paper seeks to address the gap between qualitative Robust Design principles and parameter optimization. The former often fails to consider the challenging amount of details in embodiment and configuration design, while the latter is the widely accepted main thrust in traditional Robust Design. The gap is addressed by exploring the value of five quantitative robustness indicators for Design Space Exploration based on variables, objectives and constraints: The set level indicators, Design Space Size and Pareto Set Dispersion, and the point level indicators, Neighbourhood Performance, Failure Rate and Distance to Failure. As a background for the discussion of the limitations of these indicators an industrial case is presented. The case is an incremental encoder and includes two configurations for comparison, five objectives, eight variables, and a range of constraints. The design spaces are sampled and they show conflicting objectives, dispersed spaces and variables dependencies. Based on this it is suggested that set level indicators are more suitable than point level indicators of early robustness evaluation, but the available indicators are limited in their considerations of design space discontinuity and conflicts.

More and more attention is paid nowadays to the human health concerns, associated with environmental problems arising from the fossil fuel use. The world scientific community offers new alternatives that, despite being more environmentally friendly, require an analysis of their potential environmental impacts. For example, biorefineries are becoming increasingly widespread nowadays offering a large gamma of bio-based products. However, it is necessary to take into account what potential effects such facility may have on the human health, depending on its geographical location since different territories may be more or less sensitive to its installation. Our study describes a new bioprocess implementation in terms of impact on human health through three countries: France, Belgium or China. In order to understand what territory can be more appropriate to the industrial process installation in terms of its effects on the human health, we propose to use the spatialized life-cycle analysis methodology.

In low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), diagnostics are not always available in remote areas. Hospitals and healthcare centres are often too far from the community, and waiting times are up to a few hours even for relatively simple procedures. Moreover, travelling to the healthcare centre and taking the diagnostic test is frequently unaffordable. Point of Care Tests (POCTs) can improve the availability, accessibility and affordability of the diagnostics by providing the test at the time and place of patient care. Although many POCTs have been developed already, there remain challenges to enable the healthcare workers (HCW) and the patients to use the device in practice. In this paper, we aim to provide a systemic overview of the barriers and opportunities for the adoption of use and acceptance of the results of POCTs based on the literature. The barriers and opportunities were clustered into six themes and used to draw out recommendations for the future design.

Previous research has shown the importance of contextual factors for increasing employee innovativeness, but to effectively support innovative behavior, we need to also understand what forms of support are perceived as meaningful by the employees themselves. The current study investigated the experiences of 35 early-career engineers in creating, championing and implementing new ideas at the workplace. They reported relatively few instances of support that had been experienced as helpful, and nearly all of these were related to either managerial or co-worker support. This support ranged from encouragement and positive feedback to tangible help in troubleshooting and finding resources, and, in the case of managers, providing sufficient autonomy and responsibility to enable the interviewees to pursue their ideas. Managerial support was most frequently reported by those working in self-described innovative positions, whereas co-worker support was more commonly reported by those working in self- described innovative environments. Formal processes and incentives were less likely to have been perceived as helpful than informal interactions with managers and co-workers.

In connection with a design research project for professional in the Dutch building industry, an educational project was developed, the multidisciplinary master project Integral Design, to prepare our Master students better for their professional life. The concept of an earlier developed integral design workshop for professionals was implemented within the start-up workshop of our masters’ project integral design. The frame work of the approach is described as well as the positive effects on the collaboration between the design team members from different disciplines as result of the morphological approach of the Integral Design method. This method was also applied during workshops in different courses about design methodology As basically the same set-up for the workshop was used this allowed us to compare the results of the different students and analyse them. During the different workshop series the effects on the outcome of the conceptual phase of the design process has been investigated. The results of this analysis are presented in the paper and showed some remarkable similarities as well as some differences among the different student groups.

For an optimal preparation of mechanical engineering students for their future work life, the use of problem-based methods in design teaching is investigated. Therefore an intelligent tutoring system for computer aided design education will be developed, which can automatically evaluate computer aided design models of design students. A knowledge-based engineering system will be used to assistance the design students in the execution of design tasks. Using a practice-oriented example, the application and the advantages for teaching will be verified and discussed.

Additively manufactured final products and components are not always tailored to the additive manufacturing (AM) process, but they need to be in order to exploit the many advantages and potentials that AM provides. Therefore, an appropriate AM design should be targeted, which reduces the necessary iterations in the developing process of AM products. Although there is a large number of existing literature on the Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM), designers usually lack criteria in order to assess AM-conformity in conceptual design. In this paper, we provide a basis for the assessment of solution principles regarding their conformity for additive manufacturing.

First, existing literature on DfAM and AM products is reviewed comprehensively to derive criteria for the AM-conformity of solution principles. Subsequently, the correlations between these criteria are identified including the interdependencies to be considered when assessing AM-conformity. A basis for assessment is created, which offers designers early support in the development of AM-conformal designs.

Drive units of eBikes are used in every type of bicycle and for different riding scenarios and riders. Due to the different riders and bike types, an enormous variety of influencing parameters and load spectra must be considered during the design process. Therefore, in this paper, a systematic approach for the optimization of the drive unit is presented, which adopts and combines several approaches from design theory. The focus is on efficient modeling and simulation of the relevant parameters and load spectra to minimize uncertainties in the design process.

Based on a system analysis, dimension-reduced parameter spaces are formed for the simulation of the system, meta-models are integrated into the simulation model and the results of the simulation are transferred into a data-based surrogate model to cover the parameter space in an efficient way with a minimum number of time consuming FE simulations. Furthermore, a coordinate-based evaluation method is presented for the FE model in order to form the input for the surrogate model, reduces the amount of data, and to allows a geometry- and mesh-independent evaluation to compare different models.

The digital transition refers to the fact that information technology (IT) tools are used in all our activities on a daily basis. In this article, we will study the use of IT tools in engineering activities. It is possible to say that today IT tools accompany engineers in their professional practices. This presence of computing has also enabled the development and considerable changes in human-technologies interactions. Moreover, the socio-economic context has evolved considerably, and environmental issues have taken on an important role in engineering. We ask whether and to what extent these two contexts (digital and ecological) have changed the expectations of design professionals with regard to IT tools. Should the way of addressing the type of human-machine interaction in engineering tools be modified in depth? The objective of this paper is to understand what types of human-computer interaction would allow a more satisfying user experience for those future engineers who are using new technologies and marked by the ecological urgency. To do so, we will focus on a particular engineering context (design for sustainability) and a particular engineering practice (LCA practice).

Designing products with a focus on self-explanatory assembly can reduce the use of procedural instructions and the associated problems. This paper describes how different groups of students, in two different design-engineering courses designed or redesigned products in an attempt to make the assembly of the product self-explanatory. The design outcomes are discussed in relation to the design context and linked to existing theory on design for meaning.