In this study, the outcomes of a particular elective course — Furniture Design and Everyday Life — were analyzed and discussed, in which the students were given an assignment regarding the development of design ideas for living room units. The common living room discourse established by professional actors such as designers, manufacturers, and marketing experts requires the user to undertake a set of generic activities like watching television, eating, hosting, relaxing, sitting, etc. However, one of the important tenets of design thinking is applying user-based research for discovering unarticulated user needs and providing a source of inspiration for design practice. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the emphatic approach of design thinking would contribute well to the area of living room furniture design, which has been a realm often dominated by stereotypes and normative configurations. During my elective course, industrial design sophomores were expected to develop design ideas considering the research analysis regarding respondents’ desires and demands in the living room context. This article overlays the students’ design ideas for new zones, furniture units and products that addressed the activities of studying, dancing, exercising, pet rearing and playing PlayStation games.
Mass Customization (MC) Toolkits are basically user interfaces that facilitate communication between the company and customer for customization of products, which transfers design data to customers and user data to companies. These toolkits have some characteristics such as 3D visualization, price feedback, material selection and design tools that make them different from common websites. Therefore, current guidelines for common user interfaces should be improved specifically for mass customization toolkits. This paper aims to propose design guidelines from users’ point of view for web-based MC toolkits that enable software developers and designers to have some fundamentals in hand and to follow them. First the elements of mass customization toolkits, which had been obtained by literature review were presented. Next, result of a study was illuminated to demonstrate the ranking of the elements and their preferred on-screen position. Finally, guidelines were provided for designers and software developers, followed by conclusions and future works.
Higher Education is facing challenges that necessitate innovative problem-solving approaches. Design Thinking is an effective approach to address problems universities are facing. This exploratory study used a qualitative approach to survey individuals involved in the Design Thinking group and further explore their experiences participating in a Design Thinking project at a mid-sized university in the Midwest. For this study, the data was collected through open-ended questions, which were sent by email to participants with a link to a Qualtrics survey. The participants were chosen frommembers of campus community, who then formed a Design Thinking group. The findings criteria contain positive interaction, teamwork/collaboration, problem-solving, structure, facilitator and group size. Conclusions and future considerations that are discussed, comprise the importance of including student perspective, Design Thinking as a method for innovation to work towards solving problems in Higher Education as well as the importance of exploring participant experiences with Design Thinking.
Co-design is currently one of the most emergent approaches within design practices. Building on participatory design tradition and User-Centered approach, this approach affirmed in the literature's headlines as well as got adopted in a wide range of practices. Being described as capable toincrease general processes’ effectiveness by ensuring compatibility between users’ needs and products/services’ features scholars emphasize the advantages of replacing traditional top-down design approaches with a co-design one. While highlighting the advantages the field literature alsoindicates several challenges stemming from the adoption of co-design, generally revolving around the need to root the approach into a theoretical framework. According to an analysis of some main contributions developed in the literature, this paper aims to point out potential developments for the field, building on the analysis of the development of the approach throughout decades and analysing the challenges that practitioners and scholars are currently facing. A constructivist approach built on cultural psychology theory is finally argued as a theoretical framework capable to provide an advancement for the field.
This paper focuses on large companies in Japan and derives insights into how large Japanese enterprises have adopted Design Thinking (DT). By comparing patterns for large companies that has adopted it by themselves and with support from design consulting firms, the author reveals each relevant feature and develops approaches to adopt DT into company operations. Towards these research questions, the author conducts a literature review on definitions of DT, tools, methods and frameworks related to DT, as a basis for deriving interview questions for design thinkers in large companies and design consulting firms. The author conducted semi-constructed interviews with interviewees from large operating companies as well as design consulting firms. Having analyzed interview data using M-GTA as a textual analysis method, the author discovered five key concepts: 1. Adoption of user observation and user study, 2. Development and usage of original tools and methods, 3. Emphasis on the sharing of feelings about participation, 4. Non-Affinity with existing development processes, and 5. Necessity of a mindset and organizational structure. The contributes of this paper reveals individual and common characteristic of large operating companies and design consulting firms.
The present paper is about the tools and strategies, designers adopt and develop to support their understanding of an underdeveloped smart material composite. Referred to as Light-Touch-Matters or in short, the LTM materials, the composition is proposed by materials scientists, integrating the two smart materials of flexible thin-film Organic Light-Emitting Diodes and piezo-electric polymers. In a project funded by European-Union, materials scientists and designers joined forces to further develop such smart material composites through early design input. In order to introduce and represent the LTM materials to designer’s prior their actual development, materials scientists mainly used abstract descriptions, ‘key’ physical properties and sensing/actuating function. Such representations, however, hardly capture the experiential qualities of LTM materials, which concern how they gratify our senses and what meanings, emotions and actions they elicit. This paper has conducted four design case studies to identify the design approaches and representational tools used and developed by designers for understanding, exploration and communication of the experiential qualities of these underdeveloped smart materials. Discussing the limitations of the identified tools in terms of capturing the dynamic and performative qualities, the paper draws further implications towards a future design Tool Kit.
The present study aims at investigating the effect of computer-aided rehabilitation on creativity and computer problem solving of industrial design students at the Islamic Art University of Tabriz. A semi-experimental design with two groups of subjects, each consisted of 15 people, the research uses a computer-aided program along with London Tower Computer Tower and Abedi’s Creativity Test. At first, an announcement was given in the industrial design faculty of Islamic Art University of Tabriz in 2016 to introduce the experiment and those students, willing to attend the experiment, submitted. Among the submitted, 30 students have been initially chosen in random, then to get divided again randomly in two groups with 15 members each. One is the subject group and the other, the control. Prior to taking the test itself, both groups have been given a creativity and problem solving pre-test. In the next 2 months, the subject group has been given rehabilitation, while the control group has not. After the mentioned time, both groups have taken a creativity and problem solving post-test and comparisons between the pre-test and post-test have been done afterwards. Data analysis has been performed by means of SPSS software program, version 21, based on multivariate covariance analysis, to show that the mean scores of pre-test and post-test of both subject and control groups have varied so significantly (P <0.01) that the computer-aided rehabilitation has improved in creativity and problem solving in the former. Considering the positive effects of this method on improvement of creativity and problem solving of industrial design students, the study shows that computer rehabilitation could be used as a method to achieve optimal performance among industrial design students.
In a world that gets harder and tougher every day, companies need creative and multifaceted solutions for facing their challenges, which simultaneously enables them to win over their rivals. Such a need leads to a method, called Design Thinking, the process of creating new and innovative ideas to solve a particular problem. The aim of this paper is to show how design thinking affects Product, Process and Organizational Innovation. The objective of design thinking is to involve consumers, designers and businesspeople in an integrative process which can be applied to product, service or even business design. Based on the information and literature, the conceptual framework of the research was designed and hypotheses were developed. Data from 95 organizations in science park of Tehran, Iran provided empirical evidence for this survey. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) using Smart PLS 3.0 computer software was used to analyze the data. The results of this study suggested that: Design thinking could be applicable to Product, Process and Organizational Innovation. Using the various Design Thinking tools, techniques and templates, organizations can apply them to make their innovations come true.
Since about a decade ago, design thinking has become a prominent topic in the scientific and business world. In order to keep up with global competition, design thinking has proven to be a valuable concept for assisting companies to innovate their products, services and processes. Therefore, business schools worldwide have introduced design thinking courses with the aim of preparing the future workforce. Scholars debate about the appropriate approach to teach design, with this paper trying to identify how a design thinking course should be arranged to teach non-designers the processes, methods and mindset of design thinking. It deals with the question of which form of knowledge conversion is more effective for bringing non-design students closer to the design thinking mindset. To answer this, it reviews current studies on design thinking in education. In particular, the research refers to Simon’s and Schon’s concepts of science of design and reflection-in-action, along with Nonaka and Takeushi’s SECI model. The research involves an experiment with two similar one-week design thinking courses, each having different teaching approaches. The courses are then compared through analysis of reflection reports by students, semi-structured interviews with them and a survey. This research shows that applying design thinking knowledge to real-life projects should be a core element in design thinking curricula, as it plays a crucial role in successfully imparting design thinking. Further, co-teaching and co-learning modes, where designers and non-designers work together and socialization takes place, is more appropriate for imparting design thinking than instructional teaching and learning modes, where design thinking coaches instruct non-designers to internalize design thinking.
The present paper studies the products in which the created experiences are more perceived. It examines 404 products, claimed by the designer or manufacturer as experience-designed, by means of a questionnaire with four open-ended and closed questions. The validity of the questionnaire was determined via formal methods. As for its reliability, it has been tested through representation along with Cronbach's Alpha methods. The paper employs SPSS-22 for a statistical analysis of the results, chi-square and one-sample T-Student test. The results indicated that (p<0.05) furniture, lighting and decorative products are mostly influenced by experience-design and that users percept the experience from different aspects of a product. Aesthetic aspect is the first one through which a user gains the experience, followed by function, material and manufacturing. Lastly there are the ergonomic features which play an important role in creation of the experience. In general, there is a significant relation between product groups and the aspect that demonstrates the new experience.
Throughout the history of international Expos, first held in Great Britain in 1851, governments made constant effort to reproduce a realm of design aligned with their policies. For instance, the republican French government decided to run a series of dynamic Expos in Paris in 1878, 1889 and 1900. Having just survived the 1870s crisis, the nation used them as respond to a fresh political situation at both national and international levels. Accordingly, this study attempts to provide a reading of the three Expos through a descriptive-explanatory approach, so as to find how design in the realm of Expos held by the French government was reproduced to fulfill political goals. The results suggest that the French government adopted various strategies to institutionalize innovative designs, somehow regarded as political reproductions of art, including: promoting tourist consumerism, building revolutionary monuments, and inventing primitive traditions. As for the first strategy, a new visual representation of information and knowledge about products was exhibited to create a kind of enjoyable entertainment. This provided the government with an opportunity to fulfill its developmental needs as consumer goods or industrial structure through interaction with public opinion and viewpoint. On the other hand, growth of economic capital was supposed to be aligned with its function and value of innovative progress. As for the second strategy, a kind of visual infatuation was created to portray the revolution eternally ideal. Finally, the third strategy kept its human utilization through a comprehensive monitoring over ethnic designs.
This brief personal reflection is inspired by the experience while working on a recently published anthology: “Un/Certain Futures - Roles of Design in Social Transformation Processes” (Forster et al. 2018). The author of this text is one of the publishers. The book is not a conference proceeding, even though the “un/certain futures” symposium, which took place on December 1st and 2nd 2016 at Braunschweig University of Art, was the occasion for the initial production of the texts. The book is rather the outcome of the reflections and discussions among the initiators and contributors in the wake of the conference. Therefore, this short text is not a book review. It is meant as a discussion piece in the context of the emerging field of transformative design theories, methodologies and practices such as Transformation Design, Transition Design, Social Design, etc.
We propose an adaptive point-spread spherical wave synthesis method based on the point-source hologram technique for fast hologram pattern generation. The calculation time of the hologram generation is reduced by decreasing the number of reconstructed point sources composing an object. A larger point source is reconstructed in the area where an object can be partially expressed by low resolution. The point-spread is adjusted corresponding to the spatial frequency of an object. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by a computer simulation using two-dimensional images.
We correct some mistakes in the published paper [JDT 8(4), 174-178 (2012)]. Equation (1), RGB spectra (see Fig. 4 ), and some minor mistakes have been corrected. On the other hand, the main descriptions, reported mechanisms, figure captions, and others are kept unchanged.
Anapproach that uses the scene information acquired by means of a three-dimensional (3D) synthetic aperture integral imaging system is presented. This method generates a depth map of the scene through a voting strategy. In particular, we consider the information given by each camera of the array for each pixel, and also the local information in the neighbourhood of that pixel. The proposed method obtains consistent results for any type of object surfaces as well as very sharp boundaries. In addition, we also contribute in this paper with a repository of a set of synthetic integral images generated by 3DS Max where the so-called ground truth (real-true depth map) is available. This resource can be used as a benchmark to test any Integral Imaging based range estimation method.
Flexible and thinned glass substrates are two kinds of important substrates but are difficult to handle by conventional in-line sputtering system for mass production. Here, we designed and developed an in-line sputtering system for mass production that can handle these two kinds of substrates. The key of this success is the well heat management of this system. With the method of multiple cycles of deposition and cooling, this system demonstrated the deposition of thick copper film on flexible substrates at substrate temperature less than 120 °C. The thickness and cooling rate for one cycle are ~800 nm and 0.5 °C/s, respectively. Additionally, the processes of deposition and cooling are parallel in our system. By redesigning the mechanical structure of substrate carrier, the effect of the thermal stress change of substrate carrier on thinned glass substrates is minimized; therefore, our system can uniformly deposited ITO film on large-size thinned glass substrates. The values of sheet resistance, transmittance, and their uniformity are acceptable for industry. Moreover, all the processes of this system are automatic which is ready for mass production.
To reduce power consumption by light shutters, bistable light shutters using cholesteric liquid crystal have been proposed. However, these bistable light shutters, which utilize the scattering of the incident light, are switchable only between transparent and translucent states. In this work, we successfully demonstrate a bistable light shutter that is switchable between transparent and opaque states because it utilizes not only scattering, but also the absorption of the incident light. We hide the objects behind a display panel and provide black color by switching the light shutter that is positioned at the backside of a see-through display. We realized a good opaque state by optimization of the electrode structure.
In this paper, a cost-effective touch screen panel with triangle twist (TAT) sensor pattern and its calibration algorithm are proposed. For touch detection, the proposed touch screen panel consists of one drive line to receive sensing information from two sensing lines. The proposed touch screen panel reduces the number of signal lines and bonding pads by about 42% compared to conventional touch screen panels, which decrease both the manufacturing difficulty and costs. By a simple calibration algorithm for the proposed touch screen panel with a TAT sensor pattern in a micro controller unit, the touch performance with respect to accuracy, precision, and linearity is considerably enhanced. The proposed touch screen panel shows reliable touch accuracy with errors less than 2 mm. As shown in the implementation results, the proposed touch screen panel is very effective in reducing manufacturing costs of touch devices, which suffer from implementation issues of signal lines caused by adopting a huge number of touch sensors.
This paper aims to investigate facial expressions associated with visual discomfort induced by excessive screen disparities of stereoscopic three-dimensional (S3D) contents. For this purpose, we constructed a novel facial expression database regarding the visual discomfort. While viewing the realistic stereoscopic stimuli with screen disparities varying from 0 degrees to 4.66 degrees, each viewer's face was captured. The database consisted of face videos and associated comfort scores obtained by self-reporting, which might be only a publicly available database regarding the facial expressions associated with visual discomfort. Using the database, for the quantitative investigation, the facial expressions associated with visual discomfort were compared with basic emotional expressions that were well defined and universal. As a result, we observed that the emotional expression of "stressed" (i.e., anger or disgust) was highly correlated with the perceived visual discomfort (Pearson correlation coefficient: 0.91). Furthermore, the feasibility of the discomfort measurement using facial expressions obtained while viewing S3D contents was verified. Experimental results showed that the discomfort measurement using facial expression recognition could achieve a feasible performance (classification accuracy of 81.42%).
