Aesthetics in Design

The aesthetic response to an artifact is the immediate feelings evoked when experiencing that artifact via the sensory system. I consider aesthetic responses to be different from other cognitive responses in at least three ways. Aesthetic response is rapid, usually within seconds of exposure to the artifact. Aesthetic response is involuntary, requiring little if any expenditure of cognitive effort. Aesthetic response is an aggregate assessment biased either positively (e.g, beauty or attraction) or negatively (e.g., ugliness or repulsion) and not a nuanced multi-dimensional evaluation

Users, Experts, and Institutions in Design

The first act of design was almost certainly user design, in that the plan was created by the user rather than by a third-party designer. Perhaps this first user designer contemplated frustration with a task tens of thousands of years ago, formed a plan to address the frustration, and then fashioned an artifact, possibly shaping a stick of wood into a digging implement. A clear distinction between expert designers and user designers emerged at some point possibly first in the domain of architecture. Certainly by the time ancient Egyptians were creating pyramids, the roles of experts and users in design were separated. This separation was probably motivated by the comparative advantage of experts over users in designing enormous structures. The activity of design appears to have become increasingly professional and institutionalized over the next few thousand years. By the 19th Century, as the industrial revolution developed in full, expert designers with specific technical training assumed distinct professional roles, both because of the comparative advantage of expertise and because institutions were formed to exploit the benefits of mass production

The Role of Product Architecture in the Manufacturing Firm

Product architecture is the scheme by which the function of a product is allocated to physical components. This paper further defines product architecture, provides a typology of product architectures, and articulates the potential linkages between the architecture of the product and five areas of managerial importance: (1) product change; (2) product variety; (3) component standardization; (4) product performance; and (5) product development management. The paper is conceptual and foundational, synthesizing fragments from several different disciplines, including software engineering, design theory, operations management and product development management. The paper is intended to raise awareness of the far-reaching implications of the architecture of the product, to create a vocabulary for discussing and addressing the decisions and issues that are linked to product architecture, and to identify and discuss specific trade-offs associated with the choice of a product architecture

The Impact of Visibility in Innovation Tournaments: Evidence From Field Experiments

Contests have a long history of driving innovation, and web-based information technology has opened up new possibilities for managing tournaments. One such possibility is the visibility of entries – some web-based platforms now allow participants to observe others’ submissions while the contest is live. Seeing other entries could broaden or limit idea exploration, redirect or anchor searches, or inspire or stifle creativity. Using a unique data set from a series of field experiments, we examine whether entry visibility helps or hurts innovation contest outcomes and (in the process) also address the common problem of how to deal with opt-in participation. Our eight contests resulted in 665 contest entries for which we have 11,380 quality ratings. Based on analysis of this data set and additional observational data, we provide evidence that entry visibility influences the outcome of tournaments via two pathways: (1) changing the likelihood of entry from an agent and (2) shifting the quality characteristics of entries. For the first, we show that entry visibility generates more entries by increasing the number of participants. For the second, we find the effect of entry visibility depends on the setting. Seeing other entries results in more similar submissions early in a contest. For single-entry participants, entry quality “ratchets up” with the best entry previously submitted by other contestants if that entry is visible, while moving in the opposite direction if it’s not. However, for participants who submit more than once, those with better prior submissions improve more when they cannot see the work of others. The variance in quality of entries also increases when entries are not visible, usually a desirable property of tournament submissions

Contact tip wear in gas-metal arc welding of titanium

Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1984.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING.Includes bibliographical references.by Karl Thatcher Ulrich.B.S

WILL VIDEO KILL THE CLASSROOM STAR? THE THREAT AND OPPORTUNITY OF MASSIVELY OPEN ONLINE COURSES FOR FULL-TIME MBA PROGRAMS

Abstract This report examines the emergence of the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) and its impact on business schools. Business schools provide a bundle of benefits to students, only one of which is learning specific academic subjects. The focal technology relevant to business schools is not the MOOC but rather a technology embedded within the MOOC -chunked asynchronous video paired with adaptive testing, a technology we call "SuperText." The SuperText technology opens up at least three pathways for business schools. Via one pathway, SuperText allows institutions to serve more students better and/or more efficiently. Via a second pathway, institutions can serve existing students with fewer faculty members. Along a third pathway, the functions of a business school are unbundled and business schools as we know them are substantially displaced by alternatives. These pathways can be thought of as a menu of options for a business school contemplating how to use the new technologies. Alternatively, these pathways are scenarios that could unfold with or without the active participation of an institution. Although our focus is on business schools, we believe the analysis is relevant to higher education more generally