Search

To unravel the complex challenges addressed by design, oftentimes it can benecessary for researchers to participate in design processes rather than makeobservations from outside. However, ‘participation’ has different meanings indifferent kinds of design research, and research outcomes will depend on theform of participation chosen. Through a Dimensional Analysis, we establishseven dimensions on how participation in design research can be classified interms of 1) the researcher-designer role, 2) the aim of the project, 3) the maincontribution, 4) the activities of the researcher, 5) if it is a single or multi-casestudy, 6) the scientific reporting on the project, and 7) the kind of knowledgeproduced. This overview aims to assist researchers in communicating howchoices for a particular participatory approach contribute to knowledgeproduction in design research.

Identity development of design students is a dynamic entanglement between personal and professional identities. Yet, literature primarily focuses on professional identity, based on institutionalized definitions of design to which students must conform. In contrast, we explore personal motivations for wanting to become a designer. An instrumental case study explores how an undergraduate design student develops personal principles for good design, and a personal vision for designing. Results show these principles and underlying vision are applied in the student’s design work, leading to development of a holistic identity (personal and professional). Finally, we note this exercise necessitated a plural and dynamic understanding of design (education). We therefore encourage design students and educators to co-design educational spaces and processes to stimulate enriched potentiality of design culture.

This paper proposes a categorization of existing approaches to healthcare-related engineering design based on systems thinking principles. Three existing approaches to healthcare-related engineering design are isolated which contribute differently to health systems fundamental purposes and interconnections. The three approaches are labeled as 'silent', 'overt', and 'convergent' health design. Each approach is defined and illustrated through an example. Following, practical advantages and disadvantages of each approach are discussed. A reflection is offered on the expected relevance of the convergent health design approach for present and future societal challenges in the health domain, and specifically on the recently growing field of e-health. Finally, open methodological challenges related to convergent health design are outlined and characterized as opportunities for future research.

Within the third wave of digital service innovation, framing is becoming increasingly complex. Accordingly, design practice finds itself in a transition from designing single service solutions that are shared, to designing systemic solutions that are shareable. We report a case study in which we use Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to analyze the framing process that a designer went through when designing a digital service for a Connected Care startup. Results show the importance of the designer's activity awareness and the challenge of dealing with relational complexity when framing the digital service innovation. With this work, we hope to inspire researchers and practitioners with the potential that CHAT has to offer for the reflective practice in digital service innovations.

The Quadruple Aim is a framework which prioritizes four 'aims', or dimensions of performance, for innovating in the healthcare domain, respectively: 1) enhancing the individual experience of care; 2) improving the work life of health care clinicians and staff; 3) improving the health of populations; and 4) reducing the per capita cost of care. In this contribution, recent literature providing examples of design research in the eHealth domain is reviewed to answer the research question: 'in which measure has design research contributed to each of the 'four aims' of eHealth innovation in the past five years?'. The results of the review are presented and employed to draw three main observations: 1) design researchers in eHealth seem to be largely focused on improving experiences of care, either patients' or health professionals'; 2) design researchers' contribution on reducing per capita costs of care appears to be less pronounced, which is outlined as a point for improvement; and 3) in a considerable amount of reviewed contributions, design researchers appear to be contributing to multiple 'aims' at once. In this subgroup of reviewed contributions, several disciplinary areas and types of stakeholders interact and integrate through design research activities. The latter observation leads to a reflection on the strategic role of design research in the contexts of the convergence revolution and of the non-communicable disease crisis. Implications of this reflection for design researchers are recognized in the opportunity and timeliness to develop eHealth-specific ways to orchestrate design integration. A direction for further research in this sense is identified in the use of sensory and self-monitored data as a boundary object for eHealth innovation. The prospective value of this direction is finally exemplified through the case of blood pressure.

Radical innovations are designs that alter the meaning of our life experiences. In order to realize such innovation, a designer needs a vision, a strong personal view on the world. The identity and values of designers however, are often denied in modern design processes. onsequently, (junior) designers have difficulties in connecting with their values and standing for their ideals, especially when designing within a corporate setting. We report a case study that demonstrates how nurturing a designer’s personal understanding of ‘good design’ and integration of this understanding in his work, influences a design-driven innovation project and outcome. Our findings suggest that a designer’s principles for good design, enable him to design more in tune with his identity and related ideals. Personal principles for good design empowered the designer’s creativity, decision making, process planning, and drive to design and promote the acceptance of a radical idea within a corporate setting. We hope to inspire designers to use personal values and identity for design-driven innovation, and would like to start a discussion with design research and education communities to ponder on howdesigners can be supported in this journey.

This research uncovers seven cross-category design styles and demonstrates how people’s preferences for these design styles are based on social distinctions. Knowledge of these cross-category design styles and the research approach might assist designers when faced with the challenge of how to address different market segments, and how to play with stylistic conventions.

This paper investigates the degree of control that designers might have over human relations in services. For this purpose, a number of speculative service designs were devised to address work-related stress. We focus on three of the generated designs, where design interventions have made changes to the material circumstance in which contacts among users and providers take place. The paper looks into the capacity of design to promote discussion and social support, and its capacity to make objects act as ‘quasi-others’ in social encounters. Through the case studies we show how different levels of designerly control can be exercised in practice.

The authors investigate the benefits of using a narrative (i.e., a storyline featuring a protagonist) to convey product information in the evaluation of really new product concepts by consumers. In the context of early product evaluation, the imagination of consumers can be guided by a narrative about a protagonist who uses the new product in a series of actions and events. In this way, a narrative can present information about the new product concept in a way that is evocative and relevant. The authors build on narratives research and study the implications of different protagonist focal characters. Further, the role of a protagonist focal character in facilitating consumer evaluations is examined, and evaluation formats (narrative versus attribute/benefit listings) are compared. Utilizing three empirical studies, this research looks at the potential effects of protagonist (dis)similarity with the reader on transportation and new product evaluation both in narrative and bulleted list evaluation formats. Study 1 shows an interactive effect of reader–protagonist similarity and evaluation format on transportation and product evaluation. The results from this study show that reader–protagonist similarity is needed for a narrative to be effective. Studies 2 and 3 provide further understanding of the effects of reader–protagonist (dis)similarity. Study 2 shows that the negative impact of a dissimilar protagonist can be mitigated by explicitly instructing the readers to imagine themselves as the protagonist, thus enabling them to fully experience the storyline. Study 3 decomposes the reader–protagonist dissimilarity and shows that not all protagonists dissimilar to the reader deliver a negative outcome. A dissimilar protagonist that is not from a dissociative out-group for the reader effectuates a positive result. Finally, the underlying process for the observed effects is demonstrated: narrative transportation is shown to mediate the observed effects in all three studies. With these studies, the authors advance narrative transportation and social identity theory. Furthermore, the research provides practical guidelines for how narratives should be constructed and utilized to obtain consumer evaluations of product concepts in the new product development process.

A popular strategy currently employed for new product introductions is co-branding. Such a strategy allows a brand to innovate with the support of a partner brand. The present study investigates how consumers perceive a new product with two brands. Previous research focused on the logic of a brand combination by investigating the impact of the fit between both existing product categories (i.e., product-product fit) and the fit between both brand images (i.e., brand-brand fit) on the evaluation of a new co-branded product. However, no study has yet focused on the relationships between both brands and their existing product categories, and the specific new product that has been developed. The present paper aims to improve the understanding of the potential benefits of co-branding by taking the role of the new product into account. The empirical study discussed in this paper replicates and extends the model of Simonin and Ruth (1998) by adding two new measures to their model. These measures are related to the fit of both existing product categories with the new product (i.e., new-product-product fit) and the fit of both brand images with the new product (i.e., new-product-brand fit). The results from this empirical study with 210 consumers in The Netherlands show that product-product fit, brand-brand fit, and new-product-brand fit have a significant positive impact on the evaluation of a new co-branded product. New-product-product fit was not significantly related to consumer evaluations. In addition, the results show that consumers prefer a new co-branded product that can be clearly associated with one of the brands in the partnership so that it can be categorized unambiguously. This paper discusses these findings and provides implications for research and managerial practice in the important and growing field of brand-driven innovation.

No abstract available.

The present paper examines how companies strategically employ design to create visual recognition of their brands' core values. To address this question, an explorative in-depth case study was carried out concerning the strategic design efforts of two companies: Nokia (mobile phones) and Volvo (passenger cars). It was found that these two companies fostered design philosophies that lay out which approach to design and which design features are expressive of the core brand values. The communication of value through design was modeled as a process of semantic transformation. This process specifies how meaning is created by design in a three-way relation among design features, brand values, and the interpretation by a potential customer. By analyzing the design effort of Nokia and Volvo with the help of this model, it is shown that control over the process of semantic transformation enabled managers in both companies to make strategic decisions over the type, strength, and generality of the relation between design features and brand values. Another result is that the embodiment of brand values in a design can be strategically organized around lead products. Such products serve as reference points for what the brand stands for and can be used as such during subsequent new product development (NPD) projects for other products in the brand portfolio. The design philosophy of Nokia was found to depart from that of Volvo. Nokia had a bigger product portfolio and served more market segments. It therefore had to apply its design features more flexibly over its product portfolio, and in many of its designs the relation between design features and brand values was more implicit. Six key drivers for the differences between the two companies were derived from the data. Two external drivers were identified that relate to the product category, and four internal drivers were found to stem from the companies' past and present brand management strategies. These drivers show that the design of visual recognition for the brand depends on the particular circumstances of the company and that it is tightly connected to strategic decision making on branding. These results are relevant for brand, product, and design managers, because they provide two good examples of companies that have organized their design efforts in such a way that they communicate the core values of their brands. Other companies can learn from these examples by considering why these two companies acted as they did and how their communication goals of product design were aligned to those of brand management.

Horizontal lines can be found in many industries, from cosmetics to hardware tools. Interviews among retail managers show that horizontal product lines are not strongly advocated by retailers, because they do not fit the way retail displays are organized. Depending on the situation, developing horizontal lines can be an advantageous strategy for design managers. A vertical product line is usually defined as a range of products from a single product category. They appeal to the same consumer need, differ in function only in gradation, and show some product resemblance. Products in a horizontal design line differ in function and thus do not apply to the same consumer needs. Horizontal lines may decrease the cost of design, even when such costs are relatively limited. From the point of view of the consumer, there might be a number of other advantages to the horizontal product line. Some consumers are known to collect products that belong to the same horizontal line, especially when those products carry the name of a famous designer.

This paper presents a contextualized study of vacation planning starting from a naturalistic perspective. Series of indepth interviews have been conducted during the period of a year on 25 Belgian households in order to follow their decision-making process for summer vacation. Data were analyzed and interpreted following the grounded theory approach. Findings show that vacation planning is an ongoing process, which entails a lot of adaptability and opportunism. Fantasy and emotions also play an important role in shaping vacation and destination choices. This departs from existing decision-making models that propose a (bounded) rational, problem-solving vacationer. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

No abstract.

Empirical findings suggest that surprise plays an important role in consumer satisfaction, but there is a lack of theory to explain why this is so. The present paper provides explanations for the process through which positive (negative) surprise might enhance (reduce) consumer satisfaction. First, the arousal that is part of the surprise reaction can contaminate subsequent positive affective reactions or emotions about the product or service. Second, the surprise reaction allows for a strong focus on a single product or service aspect. This will create more accessible knowledge that may have a disproportionate effect on memory-based satisfaction judgements. In addition, several possible moderators of the surprise-satisfaction relationship are described. Finally, the managerial implications of the proposed processes and moderators are discussed

This study was designed to find underlying measures for product originality. It is argued that the common predictors of originality, i.e. novelty and appropriateness, can be caught in terms of relatively unique and appropriate associations of a product with a list of domains. In an experiment these associations were assessed for 14 telephones. When novelty of the telephones was statistically controlled for, two of the three association measures developed were significantly related to originality. These measures probe the relative uniqueness of the associations, regardless of the appropriateness of those associations

No abstract

The societal and technical problems faced by low-income markets are increasingly seen as more complex due to environmental, social, and economic concerns. The enormous negative impacts of complex societal problems and the inability of designers to deal with complexity cannot be overcome without a paradigm shift in how we understand, engage with, and teach about such issues. In light of this challenge, one can pose the question, “What is the best approach to deal with a complex societal problem?”. A traditional approach to deal with a complex problem is to simplify it. Alternatively, as here, research may aim to provide a novel approach to handle complex societal problems, thereby embracing complexity. Thus, this thesis contends that embracing complexity represents a significant shift from the traditional design approach to a systems design approach for sustainable development. To help designers to bring about such a transition, the four main contributions provided in this doctoral research are: (I) Exploring the integration of systems thinking into design, particularly by adopting a systems design approach to sustainable energy solutions for low-income markets; (II) Extending the scope of product-service system design through the introduction of four major systems thinking tenets: a holistic perspective; a multilevel perspective; a pluralistic perspective; and complexity-handling capacity; (III) Proposing heuristic tools for the integration of systems thinking into design, which allows for developing new and strengthening existing systems design approaches; and, (IV) Increasing capacity building for a systems design approach to address complex societal problems through design education.