Product graphics interchange formats (GIFs) employ this format to show the features of the product and make up for the lack of physical experience online. These GIFs have been widely applied in domains such as e-shopping and social media, aiming to interest and impress viewers. Contrary to this wide application, most designers in this domain lack expertise and produce GIFs of varied quality. Moreover, the knowledge of techniques to enhance viewers’ engagement with product GIFs is also lacking. To bridge the gap, we conducted a series of studies. First, we collected and summarized seven design factors referring to existing literature and semi-structured interviews. Then, the impacts of these design factors were revealed through an online study with 106 product GIFs among 307 participants. The results showed that visual-related factors such as color contrast and moving intensity mainly impact viewers’ interest, while content-related factors such as scenario and style matching impact viewers’ impressions. The simplicity of GIFs also impressed viewers with a quick viewing mode. Finally, we conducted a workshop and verified that these results support large-scale production of product GIFs. Our studies might support the codesign methods of product GIFs and enhance their quality in design practice.

In recent years, co-creation and collaboration platforms to create and deliver new products and services have taken a step forward; this has led to the development of a new active involvement of users, who from co-designers have become independent designers, even if not experts. Co-design is dynamic and provides the tools to generate democratic design processes guided by the users themselves. The democratization of design tools is the premise for a new paradigm defined ‘Diffuse Design’ by Manzini (2015). This contribution explores the approaches of open design and open production with particular attention to the field of visual communication and the production of motion design artifacts. After an introduction to the co-design framework, the main open-production visual communication platforms are presented to offer an overview of the topic. Next, the potential of online platforms to enable non-designers to produce animated artifacts is explored by examining student projects in a motion design University course. The most significant outputs of the student experience are then described and critically analyzed. Finally, the conclusions investigate the different perspectives for reading the democratization of tools for creating visual artifacts and lay the foundations for future lines of research.

This paper describes an approach for designing an energy efficient motion and task scheduling for an autonomous vehicle which is moving in complicated environments in industrial sector or in large warehouses. The vehicle is requested to serve a number of workstations while moving safely and efficiently in the environment. In the proposed approach, the overall problem is formulated as a constraint optimization problem by using the Bump-Surface concept. Then, a Pareto-based multi- objective optimization strategy is adopted, and a modified genetic algorithm is developed to determine the Pareto optimum solution. The efficiency of the developed method is investigated and discussed through simulated experiments.

This paper addresses the swing-free transport of simply suspended objects which cannot be grasped by robot manipulators, and therefore, must be carried by a hook or a similar device attached to the manipulator endpoint. Two methods are presented to stop the suspended object in a swing-free state at the end of a move/gross motion; (1) limiting transportation time, thus stopping the manipulator at the instant when the object completes one or more full cycle(s), and (2) adjusting traveling time of each section of a three-piece continuous trajectory provided that a given transportation time is unchanged. A hydraulically actuated robot manipulator carrying a compound pendulum was employed as an experimental system to test the methods. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of both methods. It is concluded that while limiting transportation time is not a preferred way to eliminate swing at the end of the move as it depends on the period of oscillation of the suspended object, the latter is a more practical and applicable method and is valid for moves of any length. The results reveal that by properly planning the acceleration of the transporting device, a robot manipulator or a similar device such as a crane, a swing-free stop is obtainable. The proposed approaches are simple and easy to implement.