Construction of scale models in industrial design: the irruption of additive manufacturing. Rubrics proposal for an objective evaluation

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2019, 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 1-3, 2019, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).Recent studies corroborate the progressive implementation of Additive Manufacturing technologies (commonly known as 3D printing) in education, demonstrating several advantages. In the field of industrial design, the development of models during the design phase of product design helps designers in training to visualize their proposals. Today, 3D printing and traditional model-making techniques coexist in classrooms. With both techniques it is possible to achieve good results, but when it comes to evaluating them it is not so simple, since both ways of working are different and apparently the same evaluation criteria cannot be used in both cases, which could lead to comparative grievances. This work presents a series of rubrics that can help to evaluate the student's models in an objective way and under equal conditions, independently of the technique used: traditional o 3D printing. In order to do this, we started from a rubric made to evaluate traditional models, which was tested during a couple of academic years in other subject. This rubric was adapted to create a new rubric, which allowed to evaluate models made by 3D printing, looking for equivalent criteria with the previous rubric to guarantee a fair evaluation of both ways of working. The rubrics were tested experimentally in the subject ‘Prototypes: experimental workshop’, taught during the 4th year of the Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain). Two groups of users assessed each work using these rubrics. The results showed, on the one hand, that both groups found it easy to evaluate the works using these rubrics, and on the other hand, that these rubrics allow for a fairly objective evaluation of the works, since the score obtained by both groups of users was very similar

Strict calculation of the light statistics at the output of a travelling wave optical amplifier

A new method for calculating the probability density function of the photon number propagating through a travelling wave optical amplifier with no restriction on its working regime (linear and nonlinear) is reported. The authors show that the widely used Gaussian approximation of the probability density function does not match the real statistics if the incident optical power is small.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Representation of industrial products in the early stages of design: Drawing and artistic expression in industrial design

Comunicació presentada a ICERI 2018 11th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (Seville, Spain. 12-14 November, 2018)Hand drawing is a basic tool for industrial designers, as it allows them to represent and communicate concepts in an agile way during the initial design phase. Although we can find subjects related to drawing in the first years of all university degrees in industrial design, the way to implement the necessary activities is not always the most appropriate, and it may happen that, despite having practiced sketching, at the end of the course the students do not have the necessary skills to communicate their ideas effectively or adequately represent the reality that surrounds them. This paper proposes twelve groups of activities designed to help industrial design students acquire skills related to hand drawing. The activities were implemented during the second course of the Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at Universitat Jaume I, improving those implemented during the last course. The paper analyzes and discusses the positive results of the innovations introduced, which improved the mean grade of the course by 4.48% with respect to the grade obtained the previous year

Practical method for modelling the nonlinear behaviour of a travelling wave semiconductor optical amplifier

The authors present a simple model of a travelling wave semiconductor optical amplifier with an appreciable degree of saturation. The model uses a particular way of linearising the total carrier recombination R(N) to find useful expressions for the saturation parameter and/or the carrier lifetime. By combining these expressions and the gain measurements realised, it is possible to establish the dependence between the mentioned parameters and the input optical power.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Packaging design: learning through fictional cases or real cases? Comparative study of student performance over 8 academic years

Comunicació presentada a EDULEARN2019, 11th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (July 1-3, 2019, Palma, Mallorca, Spain).In the practical subjects of the Degrees in Industrial Design students usually apply theoretical knowledge to solve complex cases, but in many occasions these cases are only fictional. However, it is also possible to provide students with cases that respond to real needs, and on many occasions it is the companies that propose them through contests. Numerous experiences endorse the Competition-Based Learning (CBL) as a working methodology that improves the motivation of the students. But it is worth asking to what extent this motivation achieves a significant improvement in student performance. This paper hypothesizes that the performance of industrial design students is higher when they work to solve real cases than when they have to solve fictional cases. To demonstrate it, the average grades obtained during 8 academic years in a subject related to packaging are compared. Between 2011 and 2014, students were presented with a fictional case in which it was necessary to solve a specific need for a new type of packaging. Between 2015 and 2018 a similar exercise was planned, but based on real cases proposed by companies in the sector. In both cases, the exercise was planned during the central weeks of the semester, the students were given a similar period of time to develop them (around 4 weeks), and they were evaluated according to similar criteria. The results of this study show that the orientation of the exercises towards real cases through participation in contests seems to have a slight positive influence on student performance (+3.25%), so it is possible to demonstrate that the incorporation of CBL as a teaching methodology is generally positive for design students, given that it improves both their motivation and the quality of their proposals and has a positive impact on their performance

Validez de la metáfora gráfica en el contexto actual de la comunicación

La eficacia de los recursos metafóricos siguen siendo válidos en diversos campos de la comunicación. La operatividad de su uso exige que se tenga en cuenta el contexto del discurso, el entorno sociocultural y la experiencia del usuario. Es necesario plantear soluciones de diseño teniendo en cuenta la implementación combinada en mayor o menor grado de tres paradigmas: el tecnológico (la interfaz está condicionada a expresarse en base al software que opera el sistema), el metafórico (es necesario hacer invisible al software) y el idiomático (proponer un nuevo lenguaje no metafórico de rápido aprendizaje para expresar conceptos o funcionalidades complejas)The effectiveness of metaphorical resources continues to be valid in several different fields of communication. For their use to be efficient, it is necessary to take into account the context of the discourse, the socio-cultural setting and the user’s experience. Design solutions have to be developed bearing in mind the combined implementation, albeit to a greater or lesser extent, of three paradigms: technological (the interface is conditioned to express itself on the basis of the software the system is running), metaphorical (the software must be made invisible) and idiomatic (proposing a new non-metaphorical easy-to-learn language that can be used to express complex concepts or capabilities)