Capturing tacit knowledge: Documenting and understanding recent methodological innovation used in Design Doctorates in order to inform Postgraduate training provision

This paper presents a preliminary review of recent Design PhDs that identify and analyse the methodological innovation that is occurring in the field, in order to inform future provision of research training for Design PhDs. Six recently completed Design PhDs are used to highlight possible philosophical and practical models that can be adopted by future PhD design students. Four characteristics were found in Design PhD methodology; thesis-structural innovation, a ‘pick and mix’ research design approach, situating practice in the enquiry and the validation of visual analysis. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on how research training can be improved for Design PhD candidates. By being aware of recent methodological innovations in the field, design educators will be better informed when developing resources for future design doctoral candidates, and assisting supervision teams in developing a more informed and flexible approach to practice-led research

Web data extraction systems versus research collaboration in sustainable planning for housing: Smart governance takes it all

To date, there are no clear insights in the spatial patterns and micro-dynamics of the housing market. The objective of this study is to collect real estate micro-data for the development of policy-support indicators on housing market dynamics at the local scale. These indicators can provide the requested insights in spatial patterns and micro-dynamics of the housing market. Because the required real estate data are not systematicly published as statistical data or open data, innovative forms of data collection are needed. This paper is based on a case study approach of the greater Leuven area (Belgium). The research question is what are suitable methods or strategies to collect data on micro-dynamics of the housing market. The methodology includes a technical approach for data collection, being Web data extraction, and a governance approach, being explorative interviews. A Web data extraction system collects and extracts unstructured or semi-structured data that are stored or published on Web sources. Most of the required data are publicly and readily available as Web data on real estate portal websites. Web data extraction at the scale of the case study succeeded in collecting the required micro-data, but a trial run at the regional scale encountered a number of practical and legal issues. Simultaneously with the Web data extraction, the dialogue with two real estate portal websites was initiated, using purposive sampling and explorative semi-structured interviews. The interviews were considered as the start of a transdisciplinary research collaboration process. Both companies indicated that the development of indicators about housing market dynamics was a good and relevant idea, yet a challenging task. The companies were familiar with Web data extraction systems, but considered it a suboptimal technique to collect real estate data for the development of housing dynamics indicators. They preferred an active collaboration instead of passive Web scraping. In the frame of a users’ agreement, we received one company’s dataset and calculated the indicators for the case study based on this dataset. The unique micro-data provided by the company proved to be the start of a collaborative planning approach between private partners, the academic world and the Flemish government. All three win from this collaboration on the long run. Smart governance can gain from smart technologies, but should not loose sight of active collaborations

Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: policies, processes, insights

The (Belfast) Good Friday Agreement represents a major milestone in Northern Ireland's recent political history, with complex conditions allowing for formation of a ‘cross-community’ system of government enabling power sharing between parties representing Protestant/loyalist and Catholic/nationalist constituencies. This article examines the apparent flourishing of community-focused digital practices over the subsequent ‘post-conflict’ decade, galvanised by Northern Irish and EU policy initiatives armed with consolidating the peace process. Numerous digital heritage and storytelling projects have been catalysed within programmes aiming to foster social processes, community cohesion and cross-community exchange. The article outlines two projects—‘digital memory boxes’ and ‘interactive galleon’—developed during 2007–2008 within practice-led PhD enquiry conducted in collaboration with the Nerve Centre, a third-sector media education organisation. The article goes on to critically examine the processes involved in practically realising, and creatively and theoretically reconciling, community-engaged digital production in a particular socio-political context of academic-community collaboration

Bibliometric Analysis of Yam Production Literature on Sub-Saharan Africa Listed in AGORA and TEEAL Databases between 2003 and 2017

ABSTRACT Objective - This paper reports the findings from a study designed to investigate the following traits on white guinea yam publications for fifteen years: information outlets, trend of scientific productivity, degree of author’s collaboration, prolific authors and their institutional affiliations, journal bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. The main aim of the paper is to examine patterns in yam research literature with a view to enhancing the development of yam production research by collating indexed information. Methods - Scholarly citation data of yam production literature on Sub-Saharan Africa from AGORA and TEEAL databases between 2003 and 2017 were collected. Network analysis and descriptive bibliometric research design was adopted to analyse the citation data of yam production literature on Sub-Saharan Africa listed in AGORA and TEEAL. The data obtained was analysed using frequency and percentages, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling. VOS viewer was used for bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. Results - Findings showed that journal articles are published more in journals (93.5%) than other outlets. Collaboration index was 0.8% which indicates that 80% journal articles were written by 2 or more authors. Journal articles are mostly published in Nigeria Agricultural Journal (21 articles) and the citation network contains 36 items (authors) with 11 clusters and a total link strength of 136. The journal bibliographic coupling citation network contains 8 items (journals) including journals with 3 clusters, 8 links and a total link strength of 31. Food Chemistry, Soil and Tillage Research and Field Crops Research which were journals published in Netherlands have the highest ranking JIF (above 3.0) and H-Index (between 109 and 204). Publications from Economics of production accounted for 40 articles (31 journals, 6 reports and 3 Technical Notes). Conclusion – The study has been able to identify the principal forms of sources; degree of author’s collaboration; first 25 prolific authors; geographical location of journals; top 20 journals; study areas of publications; trend of scientific productivity; impact factors and H-index of publication outlets; institutional affiliations of authors; co-cited authors; and co-cited journals in Sub-Saharan yam literature listed in AGORA and TEAL databases between 2003 and 2017

Capturing the Visitor Profile for a Personalized Mobile Museum Experience: an Indirect Approach

An increasing number of museums and cultural institutions around the world use personalized, mostly mobile, museum guides to enhance visitor experiences. However since a typical museum visit may last a few minutes and visitors might only visit once, the personalization processes need to be quick and efficient, ensuring the engagement of the visitor. In this paper we investigate the use of indirect profiling methods through a visitor quiz, in order to provide the visitor with specific museum content. Building on our experience of a first study aimed at the design, implementation and user testing of a short quiz version at the Acropolis Museum, a second parallel study was devised. This paper introduces this research, which collected and analyzed data from two environments: the Acropolis Museum and social media (i.e. Facebook). Key profiling issues are identified, results are presented, and guidelines towards a generalized approach for the profiling needs of cultural institutions are discussed

Methodological Innovation in Practice-Based Design Doctorates

This article presents a selective review of recent design PhDs that identify and analyse the methodological innovation that is occurring in the field, in order to inform future provision of research training. Six recently completed design PhDs are used to highlight possible philosophical and practical models that can be adopted by future PhD students in design. Four characteristics were found in design PhD methodology: innovations in the format and structure of the thesis, a pick-and-mix approach to research design, situating practice in the inquiry, and the validation of visual analysis. The article concludes by offering suggestions on how research training can be improved. By being aware of recent methodological innovations in the field, design educators will be better informed when developing resources for future design doctoral candidates and assisting supervision teams in developing a more informed and flexible approach to practice-based research

Market fields structure & dynamics in industrial automation

There is a research tradition in the economics of standards which addresses standards wars, antitrust concerns or positive externalities from standards. Recent research has also dealt with the process characteristics of standardisation, de facto standard-setting consortia and intellectual property concerns in the technology specification or implementation phase. Nonetheless, there are no studies which analyse capabilities, comparative industry dynamics or incentive structures sufficiently in the context of standard-setting. In my study, I address the characteristics of collaborative research and standard-setting as a new mode of deploying assets beyond motivations well-known from R&D consortia or market alliances. On the basis of a case study of a leading user organisation in the market for industrial automation technology, but also a descriptive network analysis of cross-community affiliations, I demonstrate that there must be a paradoxical relationship between cooperation and competition. More precisely, I explain how there can be a dual relationship between value creation and value capture respecting exploration and exploitation. My case study emphasises the dynamics between knowledge stocks (knowledge alignment, narrowing and deepening) produced by collaborative standard setting and innovation; it also sheds light on an evolutional relationship between the exploration of assets and use cases and each firm's exploitation activities in the market. I derive standard-setting capabilities from an empirical analysis of membership structures, policies and incumbent firm characteristics in selected, but leading, user organisations. The results are as follows: the market for industrial automation technology is characterised by collaboration on standards, high technology influences of other industries and network effects on standards. Further, system integrators play a decisive role in value creation in the customer-specific business case. Standard-setting activities appear to be loosely coupled to the products offered on the market. Core leaders in world standards in industrial automation own a variety of assets and they are affiliated to many standard-setting communities rather than exclusively committed to a few standards. Furthermore, their R&D ratios outperform those of peripheral members and experience in standard-setting processes can be assumed. Standard-setting communities specify common core concepts as the basis for the development of each member's proprietary products, complementary technologies and industrial services. From a knowledge-based perspective, the targeted disclosure of certain knowledge can be used to achieve high innovation returns through systemic products which add proprietary features to open standards. Finally, the interplay between exploitation and exploration respecting the deployment of standard-setting capabilities linked to cooperative, pre-competitive processes leads to an evolution in common technology owned and exploited by the standard-setting community as a particular kind of innovation ecosystem. --standard-setting,innovation,industry dynamics and context,industrial automation

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles