Redesigning the jMetal Multi-Objective Optimization Framework

jMetal, an open source, Java-based framework for multi-objective optimization with metaheuristics, has become a valuable tool for many researches in the area as well as for some industrial partners in the last ten years. Our experience using and maintaining it during that time, as well as the received comments and suggestions, have helped us improve the jMetal design and identify significant features to incorporate. This paper revisits the jMetal architecture, describing its refined new design, which relies on design patterns, principles from object-oriented design, and a better use of the Java language features to improve the quality of the code, without disregarding jMetal ever goals of simplicity, facility of use, flexibility, extensibility and portability. Among the newly incorporated features, jMetal supports live interaction with running algorithms and parallel execution of algorithms.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Designing for experience: Example experience design projects on workspace

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Industrial Design, Izmir, 2006Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 94-95)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxv, 96 leavesThe great experiences can be deliberate and are based upon principles that have been proven. This thesis study explored the most important of these principles before the practical study. After that, the study focused on making a practical study on the workspace domain in three main phases.In the data collecting phase, experience data was collected for a workspace domain by observing workspace activities. Used methods were photographing, informal interviews, field notes and ethnographic observation. In the data modeling phase, a data model were constructed. Pattern language was used as a base for re-modeling the experience data. The data model is simply a framework that allows the designer to document, collect, communicate and understand all design related information quickly and easily. During the design phase, this framework became the design guideline and was used as a roadmap for every single design idea.Framework also gives the opportunity of defining relations from patterns to patterns and from design ideas to patterns. This flexible opportunity lets the designer visualize experience scenarios with design ideas in a higher level of understanding. Framework has a special data encapsulation format which is inherited from pattern language. According to that format, short pattern names, short essence paragraphs and other sections makes easier to remember, communicate and connect the patterns with new ideas. At the end of the design phase, three different products which are actively related with the experience patterns were designed

Equipment users’ experiences of a manufacturer’s smart services

Purpose: The use of a manufacturers’ equipment and industrial services is dependent on the users’ readiness and capabilities. In a business-to-business context, different users may have different experiences with intelligent product features and related smart services, and the experiences need to be understood, when a manufacturer develops and delivers its industrial services. The goal of this study is to identify user experience patterns concerning intelligent product features and related smart services for industrial equipment. The focus is on the early phases of adopting the intelligent product features and related smart services. Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative case study was implemented with two customers of a machine manufacturer. Data were collected through interviews, and user experiences were analysed concerning intelligent features, services, and the service supplier. Findings: The cross-case analysis reveals that all users do not experience benefits from intelligent features and related smart services. Four different user experience patterns are reported: feature-centric, competence-centric, development-oriented, and decision-oriented. Originality/Value: The study adopts a users’ perspective to industrial services, thereby offering a more nuanced idea of customer experiences and potentially explaining why digital servitization proceeds slowly within customer firms.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Design Management Capability in Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of Xiaomi

In recent years, entrepreneurship has become a popular topic and attracted many young people to start their own companies. In entrepreneurship, design was generally viewed as essential to innovation, replacing the conventional role of the engineer. Unlike traditional businesses, which generally take a longer time to become established in the more stable economic context of mass-production, current start-ups have to face fierce competition and have the tendency to expand rapidly and accommodate the dynamic business environment. Consequently, design management is considered to be crucial to business growth, since it contributes to both competitive advantages and strategic flexibility. However, start-up companies are well-known for their high failure ratio. This triggered our initial research question: what is the role of design in a start-up to support it in achieving success? Through a case study of Xiaomi, a well-known successful entrepreneurship in China, the new capabilities of entrepreneurial design management were reported. It was further classified into three key topics in line with the three stages of entrepreneurial business development. Difference with design management capabilities reported in previous studies, the new capabilities show the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial design management

Experiential Role of Artefacts in Cooperative Design

The role of material artefacts in supporting distributed and co-located work practices has been well acknowledged within the HCI and CSCW research. In this paper, we show that in addition to their ecological, coordinative and organizational support, artefacts also play an ‘experiential’ role. In this case, artefacts not only improve efficiency or have a purely functional role (e.g. allowing people to complete tasks quickly), but the presence and manifestations of these artefacts bring quality and richness to people’s performance and help in making better sense of their everyday lives. In a domain like industrial design, such artefacts play an important role for supporting creativity and innovation. Based on our prolonged ethnographic fieldwork on understanding cooperative design practices of industrial design students and researchers, we describe several experiential practices that are supported by mundane artefacts like sketches, drawings, physical models and explorative prototypes – used and developed in designers’ everyday work. Our main intention to carry out this kind of research is to develop technologies to support designers’ everyday practices. We believe that with the emergence of ubiquitous computing, there is a growing need to focus on personal, emotional and social side of people’s everyday experiences. By focusing on the experiential practices of designers, we can provide a holistic view in the design of new interactive technologies

Limits of Kansei – Kansei unlimited

This article discusses momentary limitations of the Kansei Engineering methods. There are for example the focus on the evaluation of colour and form factors, as well as the highly time consuming creation of the questionnaires. To overcome these limits we firstly suggest the integration of word lists from related research fields, like sociology and cognitive psychology on product emotions in the Kansei questionnaires. Thereafter we present a study on the wide range of Kansei attributes treated in an industrial setting. Concept words used by designers are being collected through word maps and categorized into attributes. In a third step we introduce a user-product interaction schema in which the Kansei attributes from the study are positioned. This schema unfolds potential expansion points for future applications of Kansei engineering beyond its current limits

Up-scaling, formative phases, and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies

The 20th century has witnessed wholesale transformation in the energy system marked by the pervasive diffusion of both energy supply and end-use technologies. Just as whole industries have grown, so too have unit sizes or capacities. Analysed in combination, these unit level and industry level growth patterns reveal some consistencies across very different energy technologies. First, the up-scaling or increase in unit size of an energy technology comes after an often prolonged period of experimentation with many smaller-scale units. Second, the peak growth phase of an industry can lag these increases in unit size by up to 20 years. Third, the rate and timing of up-scaling at the unit level is subject to countervailing influences of scale economies and heterogeneous market demand. These observed patterns have important implications for experience curve analyses based on time series data covering the up-scaling phases of energy technologies, as these are likely to conflate industry level learning effects with unit level scale effects. The historical diffusion of energy technologies also suggests that low carbon technology policies pushing for significant jumps in unit size before a ‘formative phase’ of experimentation with smaller-scale units are risky

"To design for the future you must leaf through the past": Museums as part of systems of innovation

Museums are not conventionally associated with innovation or viewed as part of innovation systems. After all, we could argue, museums are about the past, heritage, and nostalgia, whereas innovation is about the future. Yet, if this is the case, why does a company such as BMW co-locate its archive, museum, and innovation center? In this preliminary essay on the combination of past and present knowledge in innovation, we revisit the academic literature on innovation systems. We explore how, historically, museums and their collections have contributed to innovation and to the development of innovative designs. We ask: How have organizations set up to preserve the past contributed to the future, and what has encouraged and inhibited these processes? We focus primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century experience in the United Kingdom and on the relationships among the arts, design, and industry on the one hand and museum collections on the other