Chronobiology is the science that studies the role of time in biology. The study of time in human bodies revealed the presence of internal rhythms related to the time of day. Considering divergent thinking as one of the essential cognitive activities of conceptual design, this paper presents the results of investigating the effect of time of day on designers’ brain activity while performing divergent thinking tasks. An experiment was run with a revised Alternative Uses Task, measuring brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Students with different educational backgrounds were recruited for this experiment, including engineering and industrial design students, to determine if the time of day affected them differently. The brain waves and related power results show significant differences with respect to the time of day and educational background. The differences are particularly evident considering the interaction of these factors. Further studies are required to understand the relationship between the differences detected and the designers’ behavioural performance and to identify which time of day is most effective for idea-generation activities for designers.

Industry 4.0 is expected to change competitiveness of manufacturing firms. However, to completely achieve this goal, firms should manage barriers and complexity issues that my hinder its adoption or its effects. For this reason, the study explores, through a literature review, whether and how design theory may be a supporting theory to manage Industry 4.0 adoption and implementation to maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks. The results shows that these research questions require a design approach to innovate not only adopting technologies but reinventing the business practices.

Computer tools are commonly used to assess designs. We develop a toolchain using open source code libraries in Python to provide an open source, interactive robust design improvement toolchain. A reference folder contains a script that reads an input parameter value file and runs the simulation. The toolchain executes uncertainty quantification steps by replicating the reference folder. This is repeated for design points, and mean and sigma graphs generated versus each design variable. This fits within a workflow of defining variation modes, design variables, and toolchain execution.

Boundaries between products and services vanish and companies increasingly offer hybrid solutions known as Product Service Systems (PSS). Thereby, a holistic view that includes both the product and service parts must be taken. This paper presents a discrete-event simulation of a PSS as a method for the specification of the product part. Besides product and service, the application scenario and the decision-making are also modeled. Based on the results for a case study, the customer requirements could be guaranteed as the essential product specifications were optimized to minimize total costs.

This paper presents an educational game fostering a new experience-based approach to teaching knowledge transfer using a codification strategy alone. The goal is to address and highlight some common issues and challenges that occur during knowledge transfer in product development and that are often difficult for especially students to grasp through exclusively a theoretical teaching approach. The game is introduced to 60 students in the final year of their Master's curriculum. In parallel, the game has been applied in a similar setting in a comparable higher educational institution, as well as in a product development organization.

“Sometimes you win—other times you lose and learn.”

Innovation projects are characterized by numerous uncertainties. Typical concepts in development management like the application of safety coefficients imply limitations of the solution space. In contrast, explicit handling of uncertainties can support engineers in understanding the problem space and in utilising the full potential of the design space along iterative product development steps. As a result from literature analysis, there is a lack of a support for product development that addresses the specific problem of uncertainty and risk in the context of requirement changes. The aim of the contribution at hand is to enhance the efficient development of complex interdisciplinary systems by enabling uncertainty handling in requirements change management. Based on a classification of uncertainty types resulting in a descriptive model, risk management measures are identified to support requirements engineers. The proposed method includes identification & modelling, analysis, treatment and monitoring of risks and counter-measures. By applying this method, engineers are supported in adopting agile approaches and enabling flexible Requirements Engineering.

Half of the total greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of biodiversity loss come from resource extraction and processing. (EC 2020). To counter this, we must switch to sustainable, long-lasting products and slow down the use of resources. It is clear that these systems will not be fixed by incremental changes but by a series of disruptions. This article uses the Aristotelian causalities as a vehicle to break down the concept of “why” industrial design and discuss the underlying value propositions of distributed manufacturing. This critical perspective allows designers and engineers to bridge the knowledge-siloes and rewire the way a product is designed, sourced, built and consumed in relation to the four Aristotelian causalities. The paper discusses the limitations and potentialities for each causality in relation to a distributed manufacturing paradigm and argues for a new sustainable design concept: The Local Limited Edition. A site-specific product design, realised by brands to enrich brand value on local markets, improve market fit and increase attachment, ultimately improving the products' longevity and value of the products.

Although it's human centered focus, design thinking has proven to be effective also in technology-driven projects, both in education and business. Yet, scant research has investigated whether and how design thinking might be leveraged to find new opportunities based on emerging technologies and design new innovation concepts accordingly. To address this gap, we employed an Action Innovation Management Research framework and co-designed a program called Tech to Market with Oper.Space, the design factory for Open Innovation of the University of Bologna. We ran 5 iterations of the program from October 2018 to December 2022, in which we conducted 52 interviews, observed 10 presentations, and held 10 meetings with the main stakeholders involved. Our results show how to apply design thinking to find and design a suitable application for a given technology, contributing to the ongoing conversation about the implementation of design thinking in technology-driven projects.

Engineering Changes (ECs) are substantial elements of the design process of technical products and are in particular relevant for companies due to enormous additional costs and time delays they can cause. In order to better understand ECs and realize efficient Engineering Change Management (ECM), different approaches exist. One aspect of ECM are change propagation analysis, which try to analyze knock-on effects of an EC on other product elements or the development process. How ECs can propagate is in particular difficult to assess for complex products realized within different engineering domains (mechanical, electrical and software engineering). To address this challenge, ECs are classified, strategies to cope with ECs are presented and change propagation approaches are analyzed in this paper. Thereby a lack of indicators for cross-domain propagation is identified. To overcome this issue, the distinction of domain-specific and cross-domain linkage types is proposed and a set of linkage types is presented. Further research is motivated to integrate these linkage types in product models while also considering processes and organizational structures as additional dimensions of ECM.

Students mental health is declining. StudyWell is a project aiming at positive impact on student mental health in student cities in Norway; by integrating relational welfare with service design, and the study environment as a starting point. We discussfour implementation challenges: First, co-design depends on a shared mindset across disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, balancing the lenses of individuals, community, system and future require facilitation. Thirdly, societal impact requires continuous partner anchoring. Finally, approaches must not further pathologize university student.

Using 61 stories from design educators from different countries, this paper presents (1) the design competencies being fostered at different levels of education, (2) the practices (approaches, techniques, methods and tools) used to facilitate teaching and learning, (3) the ‘non-design’ competencies being fostered, and (4) the impact of COVID 19. Our findings highlight design education is not only used to teach students how to design, but also to kindle productive attitudes, behaviours and mindsets that give them the ability to address a wide range of challenges.

The challenge of user requirements for maintenance scheduling design in large asset-intensive industries suffers from lack of academic and empirical studies. Therefore, using a representative case study, this paper aims to: (1) identify the current practices and complex scheduling requirements; (2) propose a design support tool to optimize the maintenance scheduling process; and (3) report the gained benefits. The results reveal that the proposed tool can decrease the resource requirements, increase the capacity utilization, and reduce the cost while addressing the complex user requirements.

Based on circular economy readiness assessments of six value chain layers, 18 design strategies and five collaboration strategies for circular economy were identified. The design strategies have many applications, from the design of materials, products, and processes to business models, and while some are specific to determined layers, others can be addressed by companies in multiple layers. Furthermore, collaboration across the value chain was found to affect positively the employment of circular economy design strategies, contributing to the fulfilment of solutions’ circularity potential.