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.

Customer survey data is critical to supporting customer preference modeling in engineering design. We present a framework of information retrieval and survey design to ensure the collection of quality customer survey data for analyzing customers’ preferences in their consideration-then-choice decision-making and the related social impact. The utility of our approach is demonstrated through the survey design for customers in the vacuum cleaner market. Based on the data, we performed descriptive analysis and network-based modeling to understand customers’ preferences in consideration and choice.

This paper builds a patent-based knowledge graph, patent-KG, to represent the knowledge facts in patents for engineering design. The arising patent-KG approach proposes a new unsupervised mechanism to extract knowledge facts in a patent, by searching the attention graph in language models. The extracted entities are compared with other benchmarks in the criteria of recall rate. The result reaches the highest 0.8 recall rate in the standard list of mechanical engineering related technical terms, which means the highest coverage of engineering words.

Biological solutions are often used for developing technically innovative products in a biomimetic process. However, biological solutions do not always make it into a successful technical product, e.g. due to a lack of knowledge on the mechanisms of action. A new approach is presented for transferring biological solutions based on complex mechanisms of action. It is based on mathematical optimization methods and applied to the lightweight design of the musculoskeletal system. Finally, first technical implementations in the field of robotics, among others, will be presented.

This exploratory work aims to understand which elements of a building mostly attract visitors’ attention. An experiment was conducted to allow participants to visit a prototype tiny house while wearing eye-tracking glasses. Identified gazed elements of the prototype were selected and the corresponding dwell times used as variables. The limited dwell times on structural elements show that they can be easily overshadowed by other features present in the building. This leads to a design problem when the novelty and the quality of a new product, markedly a building, reside in the materials used.

To renew their innovation and creativity practices, companies are now equipping themselves with new specific places: innovation laboratories. These laboratories support project teams during creativity sessions to generate ideas. In order to improve these practices, it is necessary to be able to assess and compare the different sessions organised. By joining the Clean Mobility Lab of Faurecia, we were able to analyse, observe and participate in creativity sessions. This immersion allowed us to develop an assessment grid of forty-eight indicators covering the entire creativity process.

We replicate a design ideation experiment (Goucher-Lambert et al., 2019) with and without inspirational stimuli and extend data collection sources to eye-tracking and a think aloud protocol to provide new insights into generated ideas. Preliminary results corroborate original findings: inspirational stimuli have an effect on idea output and questionnaire ratings. Near and far inspirational stimuli increased participants’ idea fluency over time and were rated more useful than control. We further enable experiment reproducibility and provide publicly available data.

Extant research indicates that Chinese higher education has overlooked creativity. However, based on indirect clues, we infer that the degree of emphasis on creativity and related courses in Chinese higher education has changed. Therefore, we conducted a survey using a questionnaire to compare the creativity-related courses and adopted creativity methods in higher education between China and developed countries. The results indicate that participation rates and assessments of creativity-related courses, adopted creativity methods, and evaluations differ between China and developed countries.

This paper reports a preliminary study (N=16) exploring vividness of visual mental imagery in product design ideation. Vividness was observed to vary across designers in the study, from high (68.8% of participants) to moderate (18.8%) to low (12.5%). A significant, strong positive relationship was found between vividness and creativity. Most participants reported using imagery always or sometimes, except one who has difficulties forming mental images. The results have several implications, including the possibility of other ‘ways of imagining’ not captured by visual reasoning models of design.

This study aims to investigate the good way to generate insight through empathy with users. The fifteen experiment participants drew thinking processes of understanding users and defining insight statements while generating insight statements based on a given interview transcript. The thinking processes were assessed by qualitative coding, and the insight statements were evaluated. The results identified the types of thinking that should be avoided when gaining insights. This paper proposes a framework to categorise designers’ process of gaining insight.

Using the EEG features extracted from the EEG signals, the presented study investigates differences in the cognitive load posed on engineers while 3D CAD modelling in two different conditions, depending on the visual representations used as stimulus - a 2D and a 3D technical drawing of parts. The results indicate a higher cognitive load during the 2D drawing task. In addition, common indicators of the ongoing spatial information processing were recognised - a suppression of parietal and occipital alpha power, a higher frontal theta, and differences in theta power between the hemispheres.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the concept generation process on metacognition, and the relation between individual concept generation characteristics and the nature of collaboration. The results of the experiment revealed that the attitude affects individual concept generation characteristics, the meta-cognition developed and the quality of the concepts generated. In paired concept generation, the awareness and the attitude toward the partner and individual concept generation characteristics affect the nature of both the collaborative process and generated concepts.

Resonance is known as an important phenomenon where individual creative moments resonate with each other during co-creation. The purpose of this study is to capture this co-creative moment as a resonant cognitive status with biosignal indicators. The authors conducted an experiment in which pairs of participants work on concept generation from two nouns and measured their dynamic creative status both subjectively and objectively with biosignal indicators fEMG and EOG. This study will help to understand co-creative cognitive phenomena and to improve the co-creative design process.

The paper introduces guidelines to support designers to generate ideas for the development of surprising products. The guidelines are structured coherently with the concept of sensory incongruity and the Function-Behaviour-Structure framework to create a mismatch between previously conceived expectations and product features. The usability of the interactive presentation is checked with an experiment that involved more than 30 subjects with a background in product design (mechanical engineers and industrial designers), which demonstrated to be capable of generating ideas using the same.

While design is often thought of as a visual field defined by renderings, models, and sketches, the use of writing can be just as pertinent and necessary. This paper presents seven writing types used by students uncovered during an ethnographic study of three interdisciplinary design studios. By reflecting on a compilation of writing practices, this study presents the modes in which we communicate design textually while reconsidering the possibility for new ones that incorporate interdisciplinary values and verbiage.

Post study questionnaires are used in design studies to uncover data about design reasoning and intent. A study was conducted where activities the study participants performed were compared to the participants’ statements about those activities, collected immediately after the study via a questionnaire. The goal was to explore the reliability of post study evaluations. Disagreements between performed and reported activities were identified, and recommendations made to, where possible, include more objective measures of design activity.

When prolonging the physical lifetime of products, it is important to also consider the value lifetime, the time before customers discards the products because it no longer has any perceived value. In this paper we study design and marketing strategies known to be particularly relevant to enhance the value perception of consumers, hence lifetimes of products. To do so, we first review literature to build a framework, we then use to conduct case studies at five Danish product design brands. This let us to insights on design and marketing strategies relevant to enhance product lifetimes.

Past research shows there are significant barriers for creating long lasting products. In this paper we examine, the distinct collaborative barriers design consultancies face when striving to design long-lasting products for client firms. Data is collected through case studies (four months of observations and interviews) from three projects. Through the study we find indications, that the value chain intricacies, provide distinct interfirm barriers for creating long lasting products. These barriers include vision clashes, misalignment in the aspired manufacturing quality and price position.

The literature lacks methodologies to make supply chains of composite materials circular. The proposed approach aims to transform scraps and off-specification products into secondary raw materials. Its novelty is to find innovative applications, instead of re-introducing scraps in the loop they come from. The case study investigates how scraps can be re-worked and re-used as raw material. First, the processes are analyzed; some components are then re-designed to be made of the discarded scraps (composites material). Results reveal that the symbiosis can ensure green, high performing products.

Based on the theoretical research of 3D printing and circular economy, combined with case studies, this paper analyzes the advantages of 3D printing in realizing circular economy and its influence on designers from the perspectives of “reduce”, “reuse”, “recycle” and distributed manufacturing. As a technological innovation, 3D printing not only promoted the transformation from linear economy to circular economy, but also had a certain impact on the role and skills of traditional designers.