The impact of trust and power on knowledge sharing in design projects: some empirical evidence from the aerospace industry

It is acknowledged by aerospace engineers that relationships between partners are influenced by topics such as trust and that they enable or inhibit knowledge flow. This paper presents findings from interviews with engineers in the aerospace industry on how trust and power within supply chain teams impact knowledge sharing and integration. From a trust perspective, the results of the paper indicate that individually, engineers are aware of its importance but that there is little organisational awareness and consequently no framework or support exists for managing it. With regards to power, we show that there are positive as well as negative impacts on knowledge sharing to be considered

About the nature of Kansei information, from abstract to concrete

Designer’s expertise refers to the scientific fields of emotional design and kansei information. This paper aims to answer to a scientific major issue which is, how to formalize designer’s knowledge, rules, skills into kansei information systems. Kansei can be considered as a psycho-physiologic, perceptive, cognitive and affective process through a particular experience. Kansei oriented methods include various approaches which deal with semantics and emotions, and show the correlation with some design properties. Kansei words may include semantic, sensory, emotional descriptors, and also objects names and product attributes. Kansei levels of information can be seen on an axis going from abstract to concrete dimensions. Sociological value is the most abstract information positioned on this axis. Previous studies demonstrate the values the people aspire to drive their emotional reactions in front of particular semantics. This means that the value dimension should be considered in kansei studies. Through a chain of value-function-product attributes it is possible to enrich design generation and design evaluation processes. This paper describes some knowledge structures and formalisms we established according to this chain, which can be further used for implementing computer aided design tools dedicated to early design. These structures open to new formalisms which enable to integrate design information in a non-hierarchical way. The foreseen algorithmic implementation may be based on the association of ontologies and bag-of-words.AN

Sensing behaviour in healthcare design

We are entering an era of distributed healthcare that should fit and respond to individual needs, behaviour and lifestyles. Designing such systems is a challenging task that requires continuous information about human behaviour on a large scale, for which pervasive sensing (e.g. using smartphones and wearables) presents exciting opportunities. While mobile sensing approaches are fuelling research in many areas, their use in engineering design remains limited. In this work, we present a collection of common behavioural measures from literature that can be used for a broad range of applications. We focus specifically on activity and location data that can easily be obtained from smartphones or wearables. We further demonstrate how these are applied in healthcare design using an example from dementia care. Comparing a current and proposed scenario exemplifies how integrating sensor-derived information about user behaviour can support the healthcare design goals of personalisation, adaptability and scalability, while emphasising patient quality of life

Design: One, but in different forms

This overview paper defends an augmented cognitively oriented generic-design hypothesis: there are both significant similarities between the design activities implemented in different situations and crucial differences between these and other cognitive activities; yet, characteristics of a design situation (related to the design process, the designers, and the artefact) introduce specificities in the corresponding cognitive activities and structures that are used, and in the resulting designs. We thus augment the classical generic-design hypothesis with that of different forms of designing. We review the data available in the cognitive design research literature and propose a series of candidates underlying such forms of design, outlining a number of directions requiring further elaboration

CHARACTERISATION OF A CO-CREATIVE DESIGN SESSION THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF MULTI-MODAL INTERACTIONS

The paper presents an investigation that aims at describing the behaviour of designers, designers' client and products' end user in collaborative design sessions, which are characterized by language barriers and significant differences in the background and competencies of the involved stakeholders. The study has been developed within a European project aimed at developing a Spatial Augmented Reality based platform that enriches and facilitates the communication in co-design. Through the analysis of a real case study in the field of packaging design involving a team of ten design actors, the paper analyses with an original joint approach both the gestures and the verbal interactions of the co-design session. After describing the two tailored coding schemes that capture different facets of, respectively, the gestures and the content of the communication occurring between the participants, the paper describes the partial results and the outcomes of the joint analysis, revealing the importance of combining the two forms of study to suitably characterize the behaviour of the design actors

Design beyond Design

© 2019 Tongji University and Tongji University Press As organizations struggle to respond to a world in which problems are becoming more open, complex and increasingly networked, many have turned to design thinking as a way to obtain solutions and achieve innovation. In this article, I will focus on the question of whether the current design paradigm is capable of delivering on these expectations, or whether design is overextended when dealing with areas of great complexity, such as in the social realm. The fact that at its core, design reasoning or design abduction requires the consideration of two unknowns more or less simultaneously (the “what” and the “how”) puts a heavy strain on our human cognitive limitations in the best of times—and doubly so in highly complex problem situations. Over the years, expert designers have developed an elaborate array of coping strategies to contend with this issue. All of these help to a degree, but the fundamental issue remains. Design might be limiting itself by approaching complex problem situations through a ‘problem solving’ perspective. In this article, a radically different approach is explored, which takes the complex nature of the problem situation as its starting point, and reframes the task of design as system transformation, rather than the creation of a solution. An example from practice illustrates this new design paradigm

An Experimental Methodology to Evaluate Concept Generation Procedures Based on Quantitative Lifecycle Performance

This study presents an experimental methodology to measure how concept generation procedures can affect the anticipated lifecycle performance of engineering systems design concepts. The methodology is based on objective and quantitative measurements of anticipated lifecycle performance of the design concepts. It merges cognitive and computer-aided techniques from the fields of collaboration engineering, creativity, and engineering design. It complements the body of existing techniques relying on subjective expert assessments, and other objective metrics not explicitly measuring anticipated lifecycle performance (e.g. development time and cost). Application of the methodology is demonstrated through evaluation of design procedures generating flexibility in engineering systems design. Experiments had ninety participants generate creative design alternatives to a simplified real estate development design problem. Thirty-two teams of two to three participants performed the collaborative design exercise. An online Group-Support System interface enabled efficient data collection and analysis. A computationally efficient mid-fidelity model was used to evaluate flexible design concepts quantitatively based on real options analysis techniques.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Real EstateNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems DivisionSingapore University of Technology and Design. International Design Cente