Engineering design research has largely focused on normative models of decision analysis based on small world causal frames where uncertainty can be resolved as probabilities or probability distributions. However, today we need to design solutions for our built environment that are sustainable, just, and able to adapt. Because of the scale and complexity of our world, designs that address sustainability, justice, and adaptability are dominated by unresolvable uncertainty. This requires large world frames and new engineering design frameworks and tools that provide a much broader and nuanced understanding of the impact of our engineering decisions. In this paper we propose that these tools will need to link quantitative and qualitative data and engineering judgment using narrative decision-making processes. To support this, we provide two examples where engineering decision-making is based in part on narrative processes. We then identify five research areas that require additional research to support large-world frames including (1) how can we create microcosms that enable transition between large- and small-world frames and (2) how engineers develop conviction to act using the narratives they create.

Small scale fabrication spaces have shown their potential to support our local supply chains during the collapse of many global supply chain networks at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In anticipation of these spaces becoming more significant in local supply chains, it is increasingly important to reduce their environmental impacts. This work investigates the life cycle of small scale fabrication spaces by interviewing 18 participants from these spaces in the United States. Key insights from the interviews include the following: a) material selection, robust inventory management, and user support for material disposal are factors influencing optimal flow of materials and equipment through a fabrication space; b) lack of information from manufacturers and suppliers is a critical obstacle to achieve optimal use of materials and equipment, and informed decision making related to environmental sustainability and ethical labor practices; c) there are opportunities to take advantage of where financial and sustainability goals align; d) individual motivators for fabrication influences sustainable behaviors; and e) effective education about material and equipment use helps fabrication space users with more sustainable decision making.

Productivity studies in the AEC industry has gained significant attention in the past decade, however the impact from actual industry application has not kept up. This could be attributed to the focus on construction productivity instead of engineering productivity. This paper presents a systematic literature review on engineering design productivity in AEC industry focusing on design research method applications.

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.

The sustainable design transition has proven to be a challenging process, in part due to the diverse set of stakeholders, which includes the general public, policymakers, scientific researchers, and businesses. In prior work, the interconnected relationships among systematic drivers and barriers for sustainable design were identified and mapped using a causal loop diagram at a relatively abstract level. To further understand and characterize this complex system, this research aims to identify the relationship strength levels among the variables in the system, as indicated by previous research identified in the literature. In addition, the knowledge maturity levels of these identified relationships are specified to illustrate strengths and gaps in the literature. The findings are used to create a refined system representation that illustrates the power dynamics between systemic driving forces to sustainable design transitions. The results of this work reveal valuable insights about the linkages among the driving forces of sustainable design transitions that can be used as a foundation for further investigation, such as experiments and data analytics that can better quantify these relationships.

The Pugh Method of Controlled Convergence is evaluated based on social choice theory, both from an axiomatic basis, and by examining all possible cases of attribute ranks for a range of numbers of alternatives and numbers of attributes. The evaluation shows that, for a typical Pugh application, concept selection varies with the arbitrary choice of datum or is simply incorrect in about one-third of the cases. While there are merits to the iteration steps and creation of new alternatives within the Pugh method, a simpler and more expressive concept ranking procedure can give far superior results.

This paper provides an overview of established approaches for function integration in additive manufacturing and critically compares their capabilities. One of the decisive factors is how functions and structures are addressed. This is necessary because function integration - among many others - affects material decisions and the manufacturing process chain. It is one of many reasons to rethink the product architecture and a way to support the design of resource-efficient products. Various strategies for function integration exist. However, there are currently no approaches in additive manufacturing that provide systematic support for early function integration.

A systematic literature review identified 21 unique approaches. All approaches were categorized according to their abstraction level within a product architecture and their design type to be supported. They were then compared on the basis of their categorization, design objective and strategy for function integration to allow for a better understanding of when to use the approaches in research and practice. Key findings and considerations for adapting function integration approaches to early design stages are presented. In addition, several research gaps were identified.

We propose to combine Collaborative User Experience Design (CUXD) projects with the integrated product and process modelling theory CPM/PDD to formalise the CUXD process model. CPM/PDD is discussed as a Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) to describe a product as well as the product development process based on a clear distinction of characteristics and properties. CUXD is presented as a cross-disciplinary, human-centred development model. It focuses on team collaboration, relates to concepts of Design Thinking, Agile Development as well as Lean UX and it highlights user experience metrics.

Within the on-going ecological transition, mobility systems are considered as sociotechnical systems that raise several challenges for local authorities due to the different levels of decision, a complex stakeholder network and the numerous objectives to be dealt with. Designers are therefore seeking to develop new frameworks to support local authorities moving towards more sustainable mobility systems. Based on the French context, this study relies on an analysis of the regulation and an interview-based survey that depict the mobility design from the local authorities’ perspective. First, it investigates the objectives defined in the law and the difficulties met by local authorities. Then, it highlights the main political, organisational, and knowledge barriers for sustainable mobility. Finally, it proposes a set of recommendations to create a framework to better define and prioritise the objectives, ensure efficient planning and monitoring, clarify the interactions between actors, and enhance mobility plans.

In this research some systemic forces to sustainable design are described and mapped out, along with key areas, dimensions and stakeholders. These results are visualized in a causal loop diagram (CLD), which was the outcome of a group model building approach supported by a literature review. Within the proposed system model, represented by the system-level variables and their relationships within the CLD, some potential leverage points that can help make product design better contribute to sustainability are identified and described. These can be found in the balancing and reinforcing feedback loops of the CLD as well as the mapping to societal dimensions of sustainability transitions and stakeholder groups. Among the stakeholder groups, business managers, scientific researchers and engineering designers can be tied to the design community. Future research is proposed to build on these initial results to deepen the knowledge about the systemic drivers and barriers and leverage the contribution of design practice to sustainable development.

Through a strategic learning process, prototypes unveil design directions. We provide a review of prototyping methods for novice designers to study and pedagogical practice for capstone design course faculty to juxtapose. Stanford University's ME310 graduate-level project-based learning course introduces students to various prototyping design techniques, such as Needfinding and Benchmarking, and prototyping methods, such as the Critical Experience Prototype, Critical Function Prototype, Dark Horse Prototype, Part-X is Finished, Funky System Prototype, and Functional System Prototype.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) are seen as key enablers of circularity. However, better sustainability performance of PSS when compared to transactional business models is not given and it must be carefully considered in the design process. The early-stage PSS design is considered crucial because it determines most of the future offerings' impact. Nevertheless, manufacturing companies struggle with PSS design and often rely on ad hoc intuitive approaches with low success rates. Current PSS design approaches have been dispersed in literature until a recent systematic literature review by the authors proposed a comprehensive generic process model to enable the inclusion of sustainability considerations in the early stages. This paper takes the generic process model as a starting point and instantiates it to the context of two manufacturing companies, seeking to (i) explore the instantiation process from a generic to company-specific process models to support manufacturing companies; and (ii) reflect upon and prepare an evaluation of the generic process model concerning eight predefined criteria. The study reveals a number of potential areas for improving both generic and instantiated process models.

Small and medium-sized enterprises are affected by changing development, production and selling paradigms in globalized industries, where innovation is a driver for sustainable competitiveness. However, innovating is highly challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises, as human resources are very limited and know-how are often highly specialized. It is often unclear which fields and factors provide the capability to innovate and which measures or methods can be applied to promote innovation based on existing competencies.

For this reason, the aim of this paper is to present a framework to support the innovation capability of SMEs by identifying promising fields for innovation and providing suitable innovation methods. A particular focus in this paper is a methodology for the description and identification of fields to foster the innovation capability in SMEs as a part of the introduced framework.

Sustainability is a key issue for manufacturing companies, which detail in their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports how they plan to operationalise the seventeen sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2016. Design is deemed particularly relevant to integrate sustainability issues, and many design for sustainability (DFS) approaches have developed since the 1980s. However, the lack of understanding of the relationship between CSR and design prevents DFS approaches from enabling sustainability issues to be integrated in the design process in a relevant manner with the CSR strategy of a company. Consequently, we developed a mapping methodology in order to provide a better understanding of the CSR-design relationship. This mapping methodology consists in (1) identifying the relevant CSR goals that can be managed during the design process, (2) gathering information about the links between these CSR goals and the design process through semi-structured interviews, and (3) building a map representing these links. We started to apply our mapping methodology in an application case in the automotive industry. The first results of this application are presented in this article.

Research in biologically-inspired design (BID) practice often focus on team composition or ideation based on an already discovered fascinating biological solution principle. However, how are the outcome of the early design phases affecting BID projects' quality?

In this study, historical data from 91 reports from student teams documenting their BID efforts from a 3-week course constitute the data source. Thus, the relationship between design problem types, function types, functions descriptions and BID projects' quality is addressed.

The study show that especially design problem types and function descriptions affect the BID projects' quality. For instance, BID projects dealing with open-ended problems yield better results than redesign problems with existing solutions operating in a very domain-limited solution space. Next, BID projects obtain the best results when using functions as drivers for analogy searching rather than properties. Finally, BID projects with certain function types seem to have more complicated conceptualization phases.

Polygon meshes and particularly triangulated meshes can be used to describe the shape of different types of geometry such as bicycles, bridges, or runways. In engineering, such polygon meshes can be supplied as finite element meshes, resulting from topology optimization or from laser scanning. Especially from topology optimization, frame-like polygon meshes with slender parts are typical and often have to be converted into a CAD (Computer-Aided Design) format, e.g., for further geometrical detailing or performing additional shape optimization. Especially for such frame-like geometries, CAD designs are constructed as beams with cross-sections and beam-lines, whereby the cross-section is extruded along the beam-lines or beam skeleton. One major task in the recognition of beams is the classification of the cross-section type such as I, U, or T, which is addressed in this article. Therefore, a dataset consisting of different cross-sections represented as binary images is created. Noisy dilatation, the distance transformation, and main axis rotation are applied to these images to increase the robustness and reduce the necessary amount of samples. The resulting images are applied to a convolutional neuronal network.

This paper presents models that identify two “cultures” of computational design practice. By reviewing the established culture of computational optimization efforts and contrasting it with the emerging work integrating human-factors into these optimizations, this paper argues that there are sets of key assumptions, outputs and tools that can be synthesized for a generalizable understanding of computational design. Furthermore, this synthesis facilitates the identification of key tools suited to computational design efforts seeking to integrate the complex data associated with human-factors.

While designing and discussing exhibitions in science centers, common conceptual framework is needed. This paper provides a framework based on participation, virtuality, and collaboration, and two models - a Rubik's cube model and a Scatter plot space. They are suitable tools for analysis and overview of existing and planned exhibitions, as well as for conceptual analysis during the design process. The classification and the models for the interaction have been developed in a research by design process, where 45 prototypes have been designed, exhibited and tested.

The design community can contribute significantly to the success of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. Currently, alignment of the design research community on sustainable development goals in Africa is not well understood. In this paper, we review relevant literature and identify trends in research topics studied and in patterns of collaboration between researchers. We find differences in topic representation and collaboration trends between African-based and non-African based researchers. Understanding these differences better will be important for future research.