A Future Archaeology of the Mobile Telecoms Industry.

In 2000, five consortia spent twenty billion pounds on UK radio spectrum licences for 3rd Generation mobile telephony or '3G'. They were investing in a future, in a specific story of the future, a story of ubiquitous wireless telecommunications. The thesis addresses questions raised in social studies of science and technology as to how such a future is made in everyday practices inside the industry, and how this future might be made otherwise. The research draws on Donna Haraway's method of 'interference' into the making of technoscientific knowledge. Rather than simply critique the future of the mobile telecoms industry, the thesis develops two methods that enact two different interferences into the making of the future in the industry. Both methods begin with a four month ethnography at a design studio of a major mobile phone manufacturer, extended interviews with key informants throughout the industry, and a substantial documentary archive. This forms a necessarily partial and fragmentary set of evidence from which multiple accounts may be reconstructed. The first method is ethnographic, and draws on the evidence to form an account of the industry and its futures situated close to London. The second method is archaeological, and draws on the evidence to form an account of the industry and its futures situated close to the 'Heart of Neolithic Orkney' World Heritage Site on the archipelago of Orkney, Scotland - a method of Future Archaeology. Through these two methods the thesis explores and demonstrates the effect of location and landscape on the making of the future in the mobile telecoms industry. And it demonstrates the important role of writing-as-method within social studies of science and technology

Softbridge: a socially aware framework for communication bridges over digital divides

Computer scientists must align social and technical factors for communication technologies in developing regions yet lack a framework to do so. The novel Softbridge framework comprises several components to address this gap. The Softbridge stack abstraction supplements the established Open Systems Interconnect model with a collection of technical layers clustered around 'people' issues. The Softbridge stack aligns the technological design of communication systems with awareness of social factors characteristic of developing regions. In a similar fashion, a new evaluation abstraction called Quality of Communication augments traditional Quality of Service by considering socio-cultural factors of a user's perception of system performance. The conceptualisation of these new abstractions was driven by long-term experimental interventions within two South African digital divides. One field study concerned communication bridges for socio-economically disadvantaged Deaf users. The second field study concerned a wireless telehealth system between rural nurses and doctors. The application domains were quite different yet yielded similarities that informed the Softbridge and Quality of Communication abstractions. The third Softbridge component is an iterative socially aware software engineering method that includes action research. This method was used to guide cyclical interventions with target communities to solve community problems with communication technologies. The Softbridge framework components are recursive products of this iterative approach, emerging via critical reflection on the design, evaluation and methodological processes of the respective field studies. Quantitative and qualitative data were triangulated on a series of communication prototypes for each field study with usage metrics, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and observation in the field. Action research journals documented the overall process to achieve post-positivist recoverability rather than positivistic replicability. Analysis of the results from both field studies was iteratively synthesised to develop the Softbridge framework and consider its implications. The most significant finding is that awareness of social issues helps explain why users might not accept a technically sound communication system. It was found that when facilitated effectively by intermediaries, the Softbridge framework enables unintended uses of experimental artefacts that empower users to appropriate communication technologies on their own. Thus, the Softbridge framework helps to align technical and socio-cultural factors

Methodologies to improve product life cycle decision making in the telecommunications industry

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.As pressure from regulation and customers increases on telecommunications equipment manufacturers and service providers to reduce the hazardous material content of telecommunications products and generally improve environmental performance, new methods for Product Life Cycle Management are required. Supplier and component environmental evaluation are vital and fundamental elements of any Product Life Cycle Management programme, as is the capture of data from the supply base. The information that needs to be captured from the supply base to meet the requirements of customers of telecommunications equipment providers; to meet the requirements of legislation; and to provide data for improving ecodesign and facilitating product-focused continual improvement for ISO 14001 has been identified. A method for capturing data from the supply base has been developed and recommendations made for implementation. A hierarchical supplier and component eco-evaluation methodology has been developed and tested. This methodology incorporates supplier environmental management performance, component inherent human toxicity, ecotoxicity and resource depletion. It provides component qualifiers and purchasers with a method of supplier environmental performance comparison and enables this criterion to be integrated with existing criteria such as quality and cost in the component and supplier selection decision-making process. Recommendations are made regarding the implementation of an industry-wide system to enable the capture of detailed product material composition data from the supply chain and the implementation of the eco-evaluation methodology to identify the supplier that has superior environmental performance. The result will be enhanced decision making in product design and manufacture, improved transparency in communication to customers and more informed decision-making at the end-of-life stage of the product life cycle.Funding was obtained from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Technology 2001: The Second National Technology Transfer Conference and Exposition, volume 1

Papers from the technical sessions of the Technology 2001 Conference and Exposition are presented. The technical sessions featured discussions of advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, computer graphics and simulation, communications, data and information management, electronics, electro-optics, environmental technology, life sciences, materials science, medical advances, robotics, software engineering, and test and measurement

Methodologies to improve product life cycle decision making in the telecommunications industry

As pressure from regulation and customers increases on telecommunications equipment manufacturers and service providers to reduce the hazardous material content of telecommunications products and generally improve environmental performance, new methods for Product Life Cycle Management are required. Supplier and component environmental evaluation are vital and fundamental elements of any Product Life Cycle Management programme, as is the capture of data from the supply base. The information that needs to be captured from the supply base to meet the requirements of customers of telecommunications equipment providers; to meet the requirements of legislation; and to provide data for improving ecodesign and facilitating product-focused continual improvement for ISO 14001 has been identified. A method for capturing data from the supply base has been developed and recommendations made for implementation. A hierarchical supplier and component eco-evaluation methodology has been developed and tested. This methodology incorporates supplier environmental management performance, component inherent human toxicity, ecotoxicity and resource depletion. It provides component qualifiers and purchasers with a method of supplier environmental performance comparison and enables this criterion to be integrated with existing criteria such as quality and cost in the component and supplier selection decision-making process. Recommendations are made regarding the implementation of an industry-wide system to enable the capture of detailed product material composition data from the supply chain and the implementation of the eco-evaluation methodology to identify the supplier that has superior environmental performance. The result will be enhanced decision making in product design and manufacture, improved transparency in communication to customers and more informed decision-making at the end-of-life stage of the product life cycle.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEngineering and Physical Sciences Research CouncilGBUnited Kingdo

Product performance assessment

This thesis describes a formal methodology for defining and assessing product performance and its implementation in a prototype computer system. The methodology is based on abstract descriptions of the operations that are conducted within the design process. It is, consequently, extremely generic and creates a bridge between physical product performance and actual user requirements. The methodology is based on defining product attributes in terms of observable parameters of the product in use. Defining an attribute in this way inherently reflects its required interaction with the user and consequently can truly be said to be in "user terms" A product will have a range of attributes and a performance indicator is proposed, such that the attributes are combined in a way that reflects their relative importance to the user. At the conceptual stage of the design process, when the actual product does not exist, and only some abstract representation is available, it is vitally important to be able to model or simulate and hence evaluate the product attributes. This area of design has often been associated with non algorithmic design procedures, because of its intangible nature. In this thesis the attribute methodology has been used to implement a prototype Computer Aided Design Evaluation Tool (CADET), which has been used and tested with an existing product range. The methodology being abstractly defined supports a wide range of product attributes. It also gives an indication of how the correspondingly wide range of existing analysis software could be integrated into a powerful single Computer Aided Design system. This work has resulted in the publication of two papers in refereed Journals and the presentation of eight other papers at refereed International Conferences. A list of the publications is included in the Appendices

Examining design management in the era of digitalization from eastern and western perspectives

This thesis investigates how approaches to managing design differ nationally in new product development and design for digital technology-embedded product and service. The main aim of this thesis is, first, to understand different approaches to managing design in terms of Eastern and Western organizational cultures: second, how these differences affect actual design practices and design outcomes in increasingly complicated digital technology-embedded product development and design. Currently, design principles for digital products and services are shifting towards incrementally uncertain complexities and the role of design is becoming broader in the era of digitalization. New approaches to design management in organizations are considered in this context: more specifically, design for digital technology-embedded products and services entails generative design practices as these digital artefacts as a whole are accomplished by devising both a physical materiality and immaterial objects such as services and software with multiple design participants. Through the design process, meanings of the digital artefacts are constantly generated and recreated. For that reason, the design practices are considered about holistic approaches to embrace such generativity. In relation to this, the organizational environment needed to deal with this requires many different approaches in order to embrace the new design practices. This is concerned with enabling rather than controlling, as has been done in traditional organization environments. However, looking at actual organizational vocabularies used in design practices, there is significant inertia with organizational cultures that can harness or enable these approaches. Taking into account cross-cultural perspectives, the features of organizational vocabularies probably differ in different organizational cultures in East Asia (South Korea, Japan, and Chinese cultural background countries) and those of the West (US, UK, Finland and Netherlands) . East Asian organizations’ features are characterized as control and governance in tightly coupled and hierarchical organizational cultures, whereas Western organizations are more likely to feature enabling or even indulgence in loosely coupled cultures. These can affect actual approaches to design management in the implementation of digital innovation. A qualitative dominant-mixed method research approach is used in this research for multiple case studies: 29 design professionals, ranging from engineering and marketing to design, from across the globe participated in expert interviews in two phases of this research. Quantitative secondary data sources were investigated in support of the qualitative data sources (+150 secondary data sources: corporate documents – earnings and annual reports; and public reports on national creativity, innovation and industry ecosystems). The research findings illustrate different approaches to managing design in the East and West due to their organizational cultures: namely, the East is characterised as inflexible approaches towards completed design output, whereas the West prioritizes a flexible journey expecting design outcomes. This however causes dilemmatic conflicts in carrying out the generative design practices for creating new digital products and services within those organizations. This thesis suggests a matrix of organizational cultures for managing design and the two design management paradigms in the implementation of digital innovation in organizations: the ‘design of management’ vs. the ‘management through design’. This study provides an understanding of emergent issues about organizational environments with regards to approaches to managing design in digitalization from international and cross-cultural perspectives and will clarify the concept of the new approaches to design in digital innovation: designing. It will make a contribution to development of design management as a rigorous discipline, which can be applied to design practices for innovative organizations in the era of digitalization

Evidence-based stragegies to inform urban design decision-making: the case of pedestrian movement behaviour.

Walking is an essential mode of transportation, and pedestrian movement is a major influencing parameter in city design. Due to the complexity of pedestrian behaviour, new insights concerning the significance of factors affecting walking are challenging to obtain without the use of technology. Furthermore, despite the impact of decision-making in the design of buildings and places, there is currently a limited understanding concerning how urban design decisions are best made. This research aims to “assess the adoption of, and opportunities deriving from, data-driven innovation techniques in the design of urban spaces, by the analysis of pedestrian movement patterns in urban environments, and to evaluate how the integration of evidence-based strategies can be established in supporting decision-making in relation to future urban designs”. The research focuses on two groups of stakeholders: Decision-makers in designing buildings and places and End-users undertaking walking activities within urban space. In addressing the aim, a range of research methodologies has been developed and trialled. The work centres on an extended case study concerning a retail high-street locale in London, UK. This study makes several contributions to the immediate field of urban design research. Firstly, the findings advance the research methods applied to study pedestrian movement in urban environments. Secondly, the results offer real impact in practice by demonstrating the value and importance of adopting data-driven innovation techniques in decision-making processes in urban design via the adoption of a quantitative data- driven, evidence-based methodological framework. Thirdly, the findings support decision-making by presenting a novel methodological framework to assess pedestrian routing in urban environments utilising the classification of pedestrian behaviours and spatial visibility interactions. Finally, this study raises awareness of the critical challenges and opportunities, priorities, and potential development areas for applying evidence- based strategies in informing building and urban design decisions. The research presents a series of recommendations for enhancing data-driven innovation techniques in urban design decision-making processes.Natural Environmental Research (NERC)PhD in Environment and Agrifoo