Microfluidics is a relatively new and, with an estimation of the market for these
devices exceeding $ 3 billion in 2014, it is considered a profitable domain. Constant
development of new technologies and growing demand for more versatile products
cause increasing complexity in this area. To address this, the current trends for the
domain include automation, standardisation and customisation. At the same time,
the society is moving from product types offering to services. Due to the
customisation trend this transition appears beneficial for microfluidics. Taking
advantage of these opportunities, an investigation of microfluidic design has been
undertaken to address the issues at their origins.
The literature review showed a lack of a general design methodology applicable for
all microfluidic devices, identified existing approaches as technology driven and the
domain as unique in terms of design. Also, it highlighted a number of automation
and standardisation attempts in the area. In addition, microfluidics shows limited
customer and service-orientation. Meanwhile, an investigation of complexity and its
implications in microfluidics narrowed the study to sub-section interactions, which
allowed standardisation and automation without compromising customisation.
In response to these gaps, an aim of the research is to develop a guideline for service-
oriented design of microfluidic devices that can deal with sub-section interactions.
This research reviews: existing methodologies for design in micro-scale, their
applicability to the domain, microfluidic practitioners’ approach to design, state of
service-thinking and services in the area and how sub-section interactions are dealt
with for these devices.
The developed guideline and design enablers present a proposal for a general process
for the design of microfluidics. The solution attempts to tackle the issue of sub-
section interactions and brings the domain one step towards an ‘experience
economy’ by incorporating service-considerations into the design process. The
usefulness of this contribution has been confirmed by a variety of methods and
numerous sources including experts in the field
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