This paper aims to identify gaps between the reflection frameworks and students’ practice. Through a systematic literature review (PRISMA) and a qualitative survey of students, 12 reflection frameworks were reviewed, and the 13 challenges students faced at design projects in two design schools were identified. The results indicate three gaps between theory and students’ practice: skills of designers, granularities of reflection items, and supports of bridging reflection to next actions. This study provides insights for future development of support tools to bridge the gaps in design education.

We created a web-based design guide to transfer our previous research findings to better support design education in the digital health design area for improving patient experience. To seek insights to iteratively improve the design guide, we conducted a workshop with 19 MSc students who specialized in design for healthcare. The guide was perceived as having the potential to improve their understanding of digital PEx improvements, but the content clarity and information presentation need to be improved.

In recent years, interest in additive manufacturing has increased. To overcome challenges such as the correct use of the technology, guidelines are needed to help the user in the fabrication process. However, such guidance is not currently available for all applications. This paper dives into design methods in AM and their transfer to an application example in the field of medical technology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the transferability of a design method for vessel models to small vessel models. To this end, an initial printing study is carried out on simplified hollow structures.

Global resource consumption is steadily rising. One option for stopping this upward trend is to reduce material consumption in general. With economics built for growth, this is not a practical path to pursue. Another recently explored alternative is the paradigm shift from a linear economy to a circular economy. The most common concept among practitioners and academics comprises the 6R's: Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, and Recycle. In addition to business cases and supply chains that have been adapted to the circular economy, the products themselves must be circular. Developers face the challenge of developing novel products without appropriate experience from previous tasks.

This paper takes up the challenge of gathering relevant methods in the context of circular product development. A classification with regard to the required input data and use case shall help users effectively and efficiently find development methods suitable for their given development task. With the categorization via a product development framework it is pointed out in which phase existing methods support users and where a lack of support occurs.

Occupational therapists modify mass-produced and universally-designed assistive technologies (ATs) to fulfill the specific needs of people with disabilities. We interviewed ten occupational therapists with experience in modifying ATs in order to understand adaptation processes. Our findings reveal the reasoning behind adaptation, common ATs that require adaptation, as well as the collaborative nature of adaptation. We propose a new framework called Adaptable Universal Design (AUD) that blends Universal Design with the need to adapt ATs in order to fulfill unique and specific user needs.

By means of additive manufacturing, especially laser powder bed fusion, particle dampers can be integrated locally into structural components and thus significantly reduce component vibrations. However, detailed design recommendations for additively manufactured particle dampers do not yet exist. The research question in this paper is: How can the effect of particle damping be described as a function of excitation force, cavity width and cavity length? For beams made of AlSi10Mg, it is shown that a powder-filled cavity of 2.5% to 5% is sufficient to increase the damping by more than x10.

We introduce the concept of social sustainability, intertwined with ecological and economic aspects, to the field of service robots and comparable automation technology. It takes a first step towards a comprehensive guideline that operationalizes and applies social sustainability. By applying this guideline to the project MURMEL we offer a concept that collects and rates social key issues to visualize their individual importance. Social sustainability is an important and often overlooked aspect of sustainable technology development which should be considered in the early development phase.

Aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) is an innovative sandwich material for designing lighter products and has many advantages such as high stiffness and high mechanical-energy absorption capacity. Although AFS is ready for series production, the number of use cases is low. A survey was carried out in order to identify the obstacles in the application of aluminum foam sandwich. This paper presents the results of the survey, derives the demand for a support method for designing with aluminum foam sandwich and shows various support options to simplify the application of the material.

When developing new systems, there is always some kind of reference to existing systems. Various approaches aim at describing qualitatively different characteristics of such connections, often depicted as some form of variation. Among other things, this is done with regard to innovation potential and development risk. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which established methods of risk management refer to modelling approaches for variations by means as mentionend above. After a litertaure search 11 methods and method clusters are analyzed more in detail within a method benchmark.

The work aims at the definition of a design methodology able to drive designers in the definition of product architectures, starting from rough information available at the conceptual design. The methodology identifies design guidelines useful for the development of product architectures optimized for a given target (i.e. assembly, cost). The methodology is based on domains which combine attributes related to a specific aspect of the target. The exploratory application of the methodology was performed to address the equipment installation of a civil aircraft for assembly/installation target.

The DesignOBS project was created to collect, map and interpret data about the Portuguese Design Ecosystem, providing supportive information for decision making. This study takes advantage of a participative Design perspective to define and test an observation process via a case based on Design doctorates undertaken in Portugal. It emphasises the need for additional participatory analysis and curation by experts to evaluate and develop more reliable information about the discipline. Moreover, it develops recommendations that can enhance the communicability of Design doctorates.

The multidisciplinary nature and lack of comprehensive ‘materials-product-manufacturing’ knowledge of Functionally Graded Additive Manufacturing (FGAM) require training to support the future Additive Manufacturing experts. INEX-ADAM, an EU funded project is building a transnational platform to promote FGAM. Brunel University London conducted two-day workshop on FGAM at the University of Zagreb in Croatia with academics and industry professionals. The workshop will strengthen the research capabilities to harness the potential of the FGAM and mitigate the constraints to industrial applications.

This study explores the effects of time pressure in dexterous operations on two types of interface: the fixed interface and the moving interface. Results show that the accuracy of finger movement is decreased, the information processing on the sense of sequence, position and direction is worsened by the psychological disturbance. The findings indicate that a fixed interface is more robust to performance and participants can learn and perform tasks quicker than a moving interface. Finally, the researchers give some practices on both fixed and moving interface design.

A robotic manipulator is usually a very complicated system whose dynamics is too complicated time consuming for real-time control. The authors propose general criteria for designing an ideal robot whose dynamics is very much simpler than that of the conventional one. In this paper, dynamic characteristics of an ideally designed robot are investigated. The design guidelines were applied to a 6-degree-of-freedom PUMA 560 robot. Based upon the design concept dynamic equations of the redesigned robot were derived. Utilizing these equations, dynamic characteristics of the redesigned robot are investigated with respect to the computation efforts required, variation of the inertia matrix, joint input torque chracteristics, and couplings between the joints. A detailed comparison study is also made between the redesigned and conventional robots.