Breaking the dilemma between robustness and generativeness: a comparative experiment on the use of new design software at the design-gap: A Comparative Experiment on the use of New Design Software at the Design-Gap

International audienceAre creative designers doomed to loose in creativity when integrated in NPD processes? While a lot of studies point the necessity to achieve both creativity and feasibility, it remains hard to make more than a frustrating trade off. Still a new generation of design software have recently been proposed to better integrate industrial designers in engineering design processes. Based on a comparative experiment, we show that some of these tools enable to break the dilemma between creativity and robustness. Focusing on the design gap, a sample of 6 industrial designers was asked to design from a handmade rough sketch a 3D-digital object integrated in a CAD software suite. We compare the performance in term of gain or loss of originality and robustness (measured by 5 independent experts) between the uses of two representative digital design tools. It appears that the use of one of the software significantly increased simultaneously to Generativeness and Robustness of a design. It confirms that it is possible to ground creativity on constraint and show the possibility of new design processes characterized by their capacity to avoid loss in Originality and to improve what we call an "acquired creativity" all along the design process

Managing radical innovation as an innovative design process: generative constraints and cumulative sets of rules

International audienceThis paper focuses on the organization of design processes and the difficulty of simultaneously achieving control and exploration while aiming to achieve radical innovation. After a first generation of works that tended to oppose NPD processes (with controlled convergence and very limited exploration) to Innovation processes (with poorly controlled convergence and random (uncontrolled) exploration, the new generation of works proposed ways to combine control and convergence either through concept shift or through stable architectures. Relying a generic analytical framework (design space / value management) it appears that each model makes restrictive hypotheses (respectively smart leadership or stable architecture) to address two critical questions: Q1. How can one increase the efficiency of exploration? Q2. How can one ensure forms of cumulative convergence? Relying on the ame analytical framework we analyze two cases that explore the unknown in a controlled way and still don't correspond two either of the two models. We show that these two anomalies and the two models actually have two critical features in common: a focus on generative constraint and a logic of cumulative design rules. As a consequence these two features might generic to several processes where teams have to explore the unknown and still have to keep a rigorous control of exploration and convergence

Mapping the energy and diffusion landscapes of membrane proteins at the cell surface using high-density single-molecule imaging and Bayesian inference: application to the multi-scale dynamics of glycine receptors in the neuronal membrane

Protein mobility is conventionally analyzed in terms of an effective diffusion. Yet, this description often fails to properly distinguish and evaluate the physical parameters (such as the membrane friction) and the biochemical interactions governing the motion. Here, we present a method combining high-density single-molecule imaging and statistical inference to separately map the diffusion and energy landscapes of membrane proteins across the cell surface at ~100 nm resolution (with acquisition of a few minutes). When applying these analytical tools to glycine neurotransmitter receptors (GlyRs) at inhibitory synapses, we find that gephyrin scaffolds act as shallow energy traps (~3 kBT) for GlyRs, with a depth modulated by the biochemical properties of the receptor-gephyrin interaction loop. In turn, the inferred maps can be used to simulate the dynamics of proteins in the membrane, from the level of individual receptors to that of the population, and thereby, to model the stochastic fluctuations of physiological parameters (such as the number of receptors at synapses). Overall, our approach provides a powerful and comprehensive framework with which to analyze biochemical interactions in living cells and to decipher the multi-scale dynamics of biomolecules in complex cellular environments.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Towards a Circular Product (Re)Design Methodology: Proposition of the Unlinear Method to Foster Circularity

Works on garment and shoe dismantlement and recycling have highlighted the complexity of this kind product and the difficulty to find a recycling channel for each material they are made of. The way they are designed perturbate the recycling process at products end of life. This paper examines these product complexities and proposes Unlinear methodology to help product design teams to redesign a more circular products which materials can be recovered at the end of their life. This method is based on a standardized product representation tool where each component product is made of is represented with its material and the function it ensures

Uncovering the specificities of CAD tools for industrial design with design theory – style models for generic singularity

International audienceAccording to some casual observers, computer-aided design (CAD) tools are very similar. These tools are used to design new artifacts in a digital environment; hence, they share typical software components, such as a computing engine and human-machine interface. However, CAD software is dedicated to specific professionals—such as engineers, three-dimensional (3D) artists, and industrial designers (IDs)—who claim that, despite their apparent similarities, CAD tools are so different that they are not substitutable. Moreover, CAD tools do not fully meet the needs of IDs. This paper aims at better characterizing CAD tools by taking into account their underlying design logic, which involves relying on recent advances in design theory. We show that engineering CAD tools are actually modeling tools that design a generic variety of products; 3D artist CAD tools not only design but immediately produce single digital artefacts; and ID CAD tools are neither a mix nor an hybridization of engineering CAD and 3D artist CAD tools but have their own logic, namely to create new conceptual models for a large variety of products, that is, the creation of a unique original style that leads to a generic singularity. Such tools are useful for many creative designers beyond IDs

Assessing the Effectiveness of Core-Shamanism on a Group of Westerners: A Brief Research Report

A study was conducted on Western adults who participated in a group undergoing initiation into therapeutic shamanism. It investigated how shamanic work could be a factor triggering changes in persons who never had been previously immersed in such a tradition. Five groups, each composed of six people for a total of 30 participants, met eight times over a period of four months. Analyzing questions asked of the 27 who completed the program resulted in the following identified themes: experiences of the group, trust in the shamanic practitioner, raised awareness of their feeling states, experiences of the shamanic journeys, understanding of the origin of personal difficulties, solutions discovered to improve one’s life, identification of striking moments, belief in the existence of “spirits,” and other relevant changes like disappearance of allergies, improved self-confidence, more assertiveness, a desire to live, optimism, the capacity to live in the present moment and to make choices. The structural role of ritual and trance in this type of program is highlighted, including discussion about implications of the changes reported