A Thick Industrial Design Studio Curriculum

This presentation was part of the session : Pedagogy: Procedures, Scaffolds, Strategies, Tactics24th National Conference on the Beginning Design StudentThis paper describes an industrial design studio course based in a private university in Izmir, Turkey where second year industrial design students, for the first time, engage in a studio project. The design studio course emphasises three distinct areas of competence in designing that are the focus of the curriculum. They are; design process: the intellectual act of solving a design problem; design concept: the imagination and sensibility to conceive of appropriate design ideas; and presentation: the ability to clearly and evocatively communicate design concepts. The studio is 'thick' with materials, tasks and activities that are intentionally sequenced to optimise learning in a process that is known as educational 'scaffolding.' The idea of a process--a patient journey toward it's destination, is implicit in the studio that is full of opportunities for reflection-in-action. A significant feature is the importance placed on drawing and model making. An exemplary design process should show evidence of 'breadth'--meaning a wide search for solutions where a range of alternatives explored throughout; followed by an incremental refinement of the chosen solution where elements of the final design concept are developed thoroughly and in detail--called 'depth.' Learning to design is predicated on an engagement in and manipulation of the elements of the design problem. Evidence of that learning will be found by examining the physical materials and results of the design process. The assessment criteria are published with the brief at the outset of design project and outcomes are spelt out at the end. Students are remind throughout project of the criteria, which is to say they are reminded of pedagogical aims of the studio. Assessment criteria are detailed and the advantages of summative assessment are described

The specification of a consumer design toolkit to support personalised production via additive manufacturing

This thesis stems from the future scenario that as additive manufacturing (AM) technologies become cheaper and more readily available, consumers without formal design training will begin to customise, design and manufacture their own products. Much of this activity is likely to infringe on brands' intellectual property. The research explores the feasibility of a situation in which, rather than attempting to prohibit such activity, manufacturers engage with consumers to facilitate it, thus retaining control (albeit reduced) over their brand's image and the quality of products offered. The research begins with a literature review encompassing AM technologies and their adoption by consumers; mass customisation (MC) and the management of variation in product offering; and traditional models of industrial design (ID), including user-centred design and co-design. It finds that conventional definitions of MC and ID are unable to provide for the possibility of consumer intervention in the shape and non-modular configuration of products. Further research was then conducted in the areas of Open Design (including crowdsourcing, open sourcing and 'hardware hacking') as well as bespoke customisation, which were found to be much more accommodating of the scenario proposed. A new term, 'consumer design', is introduced and defined, together with the hypothesis that in future, the role of the industrial designer may be to design 'unfinished' products. An original classification of consumer involvement in ID is presented. Empirical research, undertaken with consumers using an iterative design software package (Genoform), demonstrated a preference for designing within pre-determined boundaries. Action research was conducted to assess consumer-oriented 3D CAD software, and compare its capabilities with that of MC toolkits. A survey of senior designers and brand managers revealed strategies for implementing and managing a brand's product design language, and a guide was created to show the relative importance of designed features. Using these findings, a prototype toolkit was created to demonstrate how a brand might facilitate consumer interaction with the shape design of a complex consumer electronics product (in this case a mobile phone). The toolkit was tested with both consumers and experienced designers to assess its viability. The research finds that it is possible to create a consumer-design toolkit which enables untrained users to change the form of a product, whilst maintaining brand equity and ensuring the product's functionality and manufacturability

Design with intent: A design pattern toolkit for environmental and social behaviour change

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel UniversityThis thesis describes a systematic research enquiry into influencing more sustainable behaviour through design, which has produced communicable new knowledge in the form of a design pattern toolkit, called Design with Intent, developed and evaluated through an action research process. The toolkit aims to help designers create products, services and environments which influence the way people use them, primarily for environmental and social benefit; it brings together techniques for understanding and changing human behaviour from a range of psychological and technical disciplines, illustrated with examples, with the aim of enabling designers to explore and apply relevant strategies to problems. 'Design for behaviour change' has grown significantly as a field in the past few years, to a large extent due to recognition of the contributions that user behaviour makes to the environmental and social impact of technology, and designed systems in general. People's behaviour is inevitably influenced by the design of the systems which they use, and it is not a great leap to consider that design could be used intentionally to influence behaviour where some benefit would result. This thesis starts by identifying the need for a guide for designers working on behaviour change. It extracts insights from reviews of perspectives on influencing behaviour from different disciplines, inside and outside of 'design', which could be usefully applied in a design context. Through an action research process of iterative development and workshops with design practitioners and students, these insights are incorporated into a toolkit for designers, which is applied mainly to environmental and social behaviour change briefs. Versions of the toolkit are made publicly available, and feedback from early users in different contexts is analysed and implications for continuing development discussed

Autocomplete recommendation plugin and Summarizing Text using Natural Language Processing

Expert-caliber documents, reports, letters, and resumes can be easily developed using Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office offers capabilities such as grammar check, text and font checking & formatting, HTML compatibility, advanced page layout, image support, and more in contrast to a plain text editor, however, it does not have the autocomplete abbreviations feature. The paper proposes an Autocomplete abbreviation Recommendation System that will integrate the benefits of getting automatic suggestions of either full forms, abbreviations, or both by clicking on the option that is being suggested. This will provide more flexibility to the user using existing Microsoft Office platforms. To create this feature, we have examined the JavaScript JQuery functions to implement a basic autocomplete feature. Information overloading is also one of the most important problems brought on by the Internet's explosive expansion. Massive quantities of text are difficult for people to manually summarise. Thus, there is now a greater need for summarizers that are more sophisticated and potent. Hence, Python's packages, methods, and NLP are used in this work to implement Text Summarization. By using this technique, the phrase's overall meaning is enhanced and the reader's comprehension is enhanced

Some problems of designing for augmentative and alternative communication users: an enquiry through practical design activity

The submission is concerned with, and addresses, problems of designing for people with disabilities, with specific reference to people who are illiterate and cannot speak. People with such disabilities often depend on electronic AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices for interpersonal communication. A central theme of the thesis, however, is that such products, and products intended for people with disabilities more generally, have characteristics that inadequately attend to users' needs. Through a combination of practical product development and literature reviews, the thesis demonstrates how improvements to AAC devices 'can be made through user-participatory, usercentred and more sensitive and perceptive design. Literature reviews in the following subjects are reported: AAC; the operational knowledge base for design and disability; user participatory design; and wearable computing. At the core of the thesis is the presentation and discussion of an empirical case study, carried out by the researcher, to design and develop the Portland Communication Aid (PCA). The PCA was conceived as an AAC product that would attempt to redress the inadequacies of predecessor devices. The design activity for the PCA is traced in the thesis, from initial concepts and development models through to a working prototype. Key ideas and essential principles of the design are illustrated. Throughout the work on the PCA, many problems associated with designing for people with severe communication disabilities were encountered. These problems, as with their resolutions, comprised matters of both designing (as an activity) and design (as product specification). The thesis contains comprehensive exposure and analysis of these problems and resolutions. In particular, the value of shaping meaning, metaphor, and other product semantics into devices intended for use by people with disabilities is explored. The study provides two substantive conclusions. First, that both the activity and the outcomes of Industrial Design have a valuable role in the empowerment and rehabilitation of AAC users. And second, that key principles have been identified that will enable designers to better identify, articulate and respond to the needs of people with communication disabilities (and the needs of people with disabilities more generally