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The exploration of new materials has provided new insights into the progressive use of living biological materials in everyday designs. Living biological materials are expected to have the potential to overcome the depletion of non-renewable resources. Through bio-design and biophilic design in the urban environment, designers apply living systems as appropriate solutions to everyday designs. This paper aims to classify the biological materials and the sense of ownership towards biological materials embedded in products in terms of a) Function, b) Aesthetic and Semantic, and c) Emotion and Experience. A survey was conducted from 173 respondents through an online questionnaire. Keywords: biological materials; biophilic design; product designs; purposes and ownership eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v5i15.2479

The delayed delivery, poor fitting and discomfort of customised orthoses are reported in rehabilitation clinics as resulting in more invasive interventions. The current practice of orthosis customisation relies heavily upon the experience and fabrication processes of therapists. In order to better understand the current practice, and thus identify data that is required for better comfort moving towards a data-driven customisation, this article describes a study generating working models of therapists. Customisations of hand and wrist orthoses for 18 patients were observed. Verbal protocol analysis was employed to extend the current understanding of fabrication processes. Working models of four therapists were established with quantitative evaluation on major phases, interactive activities and iterations of performing tasks during fabrication, revealing different working models between in- and out-patient departments (e.g. fabrication for in-patients was more complex and focussed on ergonomic fitting whereas fabrication for out-patients paid attention to durability) which were qualitatively explained. Practitioner summary: Fit and comfort are imperative for orthosis design and fabrication, however the current practice of customisation of an orthosis relies upon the experience of individual hand therapist. The article presents working models of hand therapists, and relevant data that would enable customisation of orthosis for better fit. Abbreviations: VPA: verbal protocol analysis; hw LTT: low temperature thermoplastic; ANOVA: analysis of variance.

Big data provides high volume of data to inform product customisation. Understanding which data is relevant remains a challenge. A method is proposed to identify relevant data to inform data-driven customisation. A case study regarding customisation of orthoses was conducted. Verbal protocol analysis was employed to extract time spent on major fabrication phases. Data related to patients, therapists and fabrication time was analysed. Results showed that the number of stabilised joints, experience of therapists and whether the design is for in- or out-patient are key factors for customisation.

Reasoning is a fundamental process in design activity, and it provides a way to understand design behaviour. Theories and models of design propose reasoning that follows abductive-deductive patterns. At the micro-level, these patterns are untested. This study analyses verbal reasoning patterns at the micro-level for group idea generation using protocol analyses of concurrent verbalisations from five design teams with industry participants. The results show that reasoning in design activity across 218 ideas follows general patterns of abductive-deductive reasoning. At the individual idea level, the reasoning patterns are disorderly and enter into micro-patterns of inference. The study concludes that understanding reasoning at early-stage idea generation processes is indicative of the mental models and abductive-deductive reasoning that are prevalent in design activity.

This article investigates the development and application of key performance indicators for global product development. Two in-depth, longitudinal case studies with multinational Danish manufacturing companies were conducted, and highlight how key performance indicators, typically used for collocated, cross-functional product development, do not provide the predictive insight required to avoid the additional risks encountered in the global product development environment. Grounded in the case study results and building on established methodologies in performance measurement literature, a framework was developed and validated in two additional Danish companies to support project managers to develop: preventive indicators, which support the avoidance of identified risks, and outcome indicators, which support the measurement towards the attainment of project objectives. The study is unique as it is one of the very few longitudinal studies of engineering design activities in a global context, providing the in-depth contextual understanding towards key risks and their influence on performance; an important step to support researchers and practitioners with the development of preventive measures.

Customized static orthoses in rehabilitation clinics often cause side effects, such as discomfort and skin damage due to excessive local contact pressure. Currently, clinicians adjust orthoses to reduce high contact pressure based on subjective feedback from patients. However, the adjustment is inefficient and prone to variability due to the unknown contact pressure distribution as well as differences in discomfort due to pressure across patients. This paper proposed a new method to predict a threshold of contact pressure (pressure limit) associated with moderate discomfort at each critical spot under hand orthoses. A new pressure sensor skin with 13 sensing units was configured from FEA results of pressure distribution simulated with hand geometry data of six healthy participants. It was used to measure contact pressure under two types of customized orthoses for 40 patients with bone fractures. Their subjective perception of discomfort was also measured using a 6 scores discomfort scale. Based on these data, five critical spots were identified that correspond to high discomfort scores (>1) or high pressure magnitudes (>0.024 MPa). An artificial neural network was trained to predict contact pressure at each critical spot with orthosis type, gender, height, weight, discomfort scores and pressure measurements as input variables. The neural networks show satisfactory prediction accuracy with ${R}^{{2}}$ values over 0.81 of regression between network outputs and measurements. This new method predicts a set of pressure limits at critical locations under the orthosis that the clinicians can use to make orthosis adjustment decisions.

Shared understanding is central to a design team's performance. While current literature describes general relationships between team interaction and the development of shared understanding, it is not known if or how dynamic patterns in team processes impact this. Using a comparative study, we describe dynamic process patterns that influence the relationship between collaborative design work and shared understanding development. We propose two major patterns that impact shared understanding development: taskwork-teamwork interdependency and inter-action heartbeat, and describe how what we term cross-level pattern alignment moderates their effect. We propose a conceptual model that integratesthese insights and provides testable propositions. As such, this work has significant implications for both design researchers and practitioners.

There is an increasing trend for designers to use living systems, through biodesign and biophilia in the urban environment. As new creative processes emerge, the perception and emotional responses of users towards these new systems are somewhat unknown. This paper aims to study the emotional responses and perceptions towards biological materials that are embedded in existing product designs. Data was collected from 58 respondents through an online questionnaire. The findings from this exploratory study show that the significant differences by comparing the respondents with a background in design and non-design towards the level of desirability, practicality, aesthetically pleasing and the common use towards artificial and real biological materials. This paper extends existing understanding of perception and emotional responses to design incorporated living systems and can begin validating existing studies which have brought different perspectives towards the functions, practicality, aesthetical value and emotional attachments of products.

Distributed teams are an increasingly common feature of engineering design work. One key factor in the success of these teams is the development of short- and longer-term shared understanding. A lack of shared understanding has been recognized as a significant challenge, particularly in the context of globally distributed engineering activities. A major antecedent for shared understanding is question asking and feedback. Building on question-asking theory this work uses a quasi-experimental study to test the impact of questioning support on homogeneous and heterogeneous teams. The results show significant improvement in shared understanding for both team types (27% improvement for heterogeneous and 16% for homogeneous), as well as substantial differences in how this improvement is perceived. This extends theoretical insight on the development of shared understanding and contributes one of few empirical studies directly comparing homogeneous and heterogeneous teams in the engineering design context. This has implications for how distributed teams can be more effectively supported in practice, as well as how shared understanding can be facilitated in engineering design.

Additive manufacturing (AM) affords those who wield it correctly the benefits of shape, material, hierarchical, and functional complexity. However, many engineers and designers lack the training and experience necessary to take full advantage of these benefits. They require training, tools, and methods to assist them in gaining the enhanced design freedom made possible by additive manufacturing. This work, which is an extension of the authors’ previous work, explores if design heuristics for AM, presented in a card-based format, are an effective mechanism for helping designers achieve the design freedoms enabled by AM. The effectiveness of these design heuristic cards is demonstrated in an experiment with 27 product design students, by showing that there is an increase in the number of unique capabilities of AM being utilized, an increase in the AM novelty, and an increase in the AM flexibility of the generated concepts, when given access to the cards. Additionally, similar to the previous work, an increase in the number of interpreted heuristics and AM modifications present in the participants’ designs when they are provided with the heuristic cards is shown. Comparisons are also made between 8-heuristic and 29-heuristic experiments, but no conclusive statements regarding these comparisons can be drawn. Further user studies are planned to confirm the efficacy of this format at enhancing the design freedoms achieved in group and team design scenarios.

Many everyday tasks require physical contact with products, such as helmets, headsets, etc. There is a drive for comfortable products that fit the task and the human body, especially in the industry of external ear worn products. Past research on anthropometry stresses that positive comfort is enhanced when there is sufficient knowledge of human factors. The majority of these studies focus only on the acquirement and presentation of anthropometric data. This paper examines the incorporation of anthropometry in the design of external-ear devices. The aim of this paper is to provide different methods to support design applications (ways of analysis) of 3-dimensional head and ear data with a focus on external ear products. 200 persons representing the Danish population were scanned. The 3-d data was collected, refined and analysed. A matrix containing 29 new ear dimensions was generated. An analysis of the dataset through understanding of human and product geometry and methods of visualisation of the dataset generated an additional number of 9 advanced dimensions. The paper finally presents all phases of the analysis of the 3D data in the form of a methodological framework. The paper contributes with, in addition to the methodological framework, techniques to extract data based on a mathematical and product understanding, visualisation of data and manual extractions and how the data can be used to define archetypes for focus groups and other qualitative assessments. In their endeavour to develop successful and comfortable products designers should focus more on fitting the task into the human by benchmarking human dimensions against product data.

Designers at the conceptual phase of products such as headphones, stress the importance of comfort, e.g. executing comfort studies and the need for a reliable user panel. This paper proposes a methodology to issue a reliable user panel to represent large populations and validates the proposed framework to predict comfort factors, such as physical fit. Data of 200 heads was analyzed by forming clusters, 9 archetypal people were identified out of a 200 people's ear database. The archetypes were validated by comparing the archetypes' responses on physical fit against those of 20 participants interacting with 6 headsets. This paper suggests a new method of selecting representative user samples for prototype testing compared to costly and time consuming methods which relied on the analysis of human geometry of large populations.

The user experience of a product is recognized as having an increasing importance in particular in consumer products. Current approaches to designing user experiences are not easily translated to languages that a computer can understand. This paper examines a particular aspect of user experience, namely perception of the aesthetics of a product, to formalize this to rules, which are embedded into a tool to generate design. Investigating the perception of consumers is key to designing for their aesthetic preferences. Previous research has shown that consumers and designers often perceive the same products differently. This paper aims to embed rules on perception into a tool to support designers during design synthesis. Aesthetic design rules connecting perceptions with aesthetic features were integrated into a set grammar and a parametric modeling tool, and applied to the particular case of vases. The generated tool targeted the creation of vases with the perception of beautiful, elegant, and exciting. Results show that it is possible to generate beautiful, elegant, and exciting vases following the three aesthetic design rules, i.e., tall, simple, and curvy. The main contribution of this paper is the method used to incorporate information on perception into the set grammar and the parametric model. The tool is additionally proposed for supporting designers during design synthesis of shapes. The results are valid for vases but the method can be applied to other perceptions and product categories.

Bio-design is a novel frontier in design research. So far no methodology has been concieved for bio-design. A methodology would render the field more accessible by those without deep biology knowledge. Existing bio-design applications were reviewed and a novel classification scheme was proposed. The classification scheme forms the initial step towards the design methodology and is also a key contribution to the emerging field of bio-design.

This chapter provides insights into how open innovation and global product development can add value in a high value engineering environment, and how the impacts can be monitored and managed effectively. The chapter begins by introducing engineering design in a global context, and how open innovation approaches can support value creation and capture for high value engineering. It then highlights the importance and impact of strategic decision-making in global product development, utilising insights from global engineering companies to provide recommendations for managerial decision support. Finally, building on well-established concepts from performance measurement, a framework to support the development of key performance indicators in global engineering design projects is developed with its application exemplified in industry.

This research aims to understand the significance of biological-analogies in fostering novelty by comparing biological-analogies with other design methods for idea generation. Among other design methods, brainstorming was chosen here as benchmark. Four studies were conducted to compare: (i) the levels of abstraction at which concepts were ideated using biological inspiration (represented using biocards) with that using traditional brainstorming; and (ii) the novelty of concepts produced by using these two design methods. Concepts produced in these studies were evaluated for levels of abstraction at which they were ideated, average novelty, and proportion of high-novelty concepts. Results suggest that concepts generated using biocards were ideated at higher abstraction levels than those using brainstorming, but neither were at the highest abstraction levels. The average novelty of concepts produced using biocards was found to be greater than that using brainstorming; however, no statistically significant difference was found in the proportion of high-novelty concepts. We suspect the lack of biological knowledge and cultural difference among the subjects involved in our studies as the two reasons behind the results. The results demonstrate that the design methods substantially influence the novelty of concepts generated, while indicating the need for better training in effective use of biological-analogies.

Research in emotional design and Kansei Engineering has shown that aesthetics play a significant role in the appeal of a product. This paper contributes to establishing a methodology to identify the relationships between perceptions, aesthetic features, desire to own and background of consumers. Surveys were conducted with 71 participants to gather their perceptions of 11 vase concepts. Advanced statistical analyses, including mixed models, were applied to allow generalisation of the results beyond the data sample. Significant relations between the desire to own a product and how the product is perceived were found (the desire to own was found to be related to beautiful, expensive, elegant, exciting, feminine, common and dynamic vases), as well as between the perceptions and the parameters describing the form of the vases (a vase was perceived as beautiful if it had many curved lines and was simple and tall). An automated mixed model analysis was conducted and revealed that general rules can be found between aesthetic features, perceptions and ownership, which can apply across gender and culture. The findings include design rules that link aesthetic features with perceptions. These contribute to research as guidelines for design synthesis and can either be implemented via shape grammars or parametric modelling approaches. These rules are also interesting for 3D printing applications, especially important when the consumer is the designer. Some of these design rules are linked to the desire to own a product, they have implications for industry, and they offer guidelines to creating attractive products that people want to own.

This paper develops an extension to established production- and supply chain management focused internationalisation models. It applies explorative case studies in Danish and Chinese engineering firms to discover how the globalisation process of product development differs from Danish and Chinese perspectives. The paper uses internationalisation and global product development theory to explain similarities and differences in the approaches. Grounded in case study results, a new model for internationalisation is proposed. The new model expands the internationalisation process model to include steps of product development and collaborative distributed development beyond sourcing, sales and production elements. The paper then provides propositions for how to further develop the suggested model, and how western companies can learn from the Chinese approaches, and globalise their product development activities from the front end of the value chain rather than from the back-end.

The reuse of knowledge and information arising from the different phases of a product’s lifecycle is crucial for a company in order to achieve competitive advantage. This paper describes a case study from the oil industry investigating the transfer of knowledge within the service phase and also between the service and design phases. Interviews with engineering designers and service engineers were conducted. Knowledge arising from servicing the drilling equipment that was identified as relevant for service engineers was compared to that relevant for engineering designers. Furthermore, the mechanisms involved in the transfer of knowledge between service and design were investigated. Knowledge about changes, issues and improvements generated during service was found to be relevant to both groups; however, engineering designers were interested in knowledge of equipment at a component level whilst service engineers were more interested in obtaining an overview of the systems. The study showed that communication between the departments consisted prevalently of the service engineers pushing knowledge and information to the engineering designers. The reusing service knowledge (RSK) model is proposed based upon the findings and the understanding from a general framework for developing a knowledge management strategy. Additionally, the initial model was revised to explicitly address the factors that emerged from the case study. The RSK model was developed based on a case study from a customised industry; however, previous studies indicated that similar issues are also of relevance to a variant design industry.

The long-term aim of this research is to develop a method to index design knowledge that is intuitive to an engineering designer and therefore encourage the reuse of information. Eighteen interviews were carried out to understand how designers described the process of designing a particular component or assembly. The analysis led to the development of a method of indexing design knowledge, which has been evaluated in two stages: (1) evaluation of individual taxonomies within the method; and (2) indexing of 92 reports using the method. The research contributes to the development of an ontology for engineering design.

This paper describes a study into industry perceptions of barriers and drivers for inclusive design. The study investigated perceptions of manufacturers and retailers of consumer products in the United Kingdom (UK) and compared their perceptions with those of companies in the United States (US) and Japan. It was found that the perceptions of major drivers for inclusive design were similar for manufacturers and retailers in the UK, but the perceptions of barriers to inclusive design differed between manufacturers and retailers. Industry attitudes towards legislation or government regulations in the UK differed from those in the US and Japan. The study concluded that ‘perception barriers' form the majority of the barriers and were the most significant, followed by ‘technical barriers’ and then ‘organizational barriers'. Consequently, strategies should focus on raising awareness to overcome perception barriers and providing supportive tools to overcome technical barriers.

The long-term aim of this research is to understand how to support designers through the provision of appropriate knowledge. This paper describes an empirical study that analysed the interactions between novice and experienced engineering designers in the aerospace industry. In total, 633 queries between novice and experienced designers were analysed. The analysis of the queries found that novice designers were aware of their knowledge needs in only 35% of their queries. The findings have implications for the type of support required by novice designers.

Increasingly engineering design research involves the use of empirical studies that are conducted within an industrial environment (Ahmed, 2001; Court, 1995; Hales, 1987). Research into the use of information by designers, or understanding how engineers build up experience are examples of research areas that often use methods such as interviews, observations and protocol analyses. These methods are traditionally associated with the social sciences, and usually with experiments set within a laboratory environment. The use of such methods in an industrial environment has created a new set of research issues. This paper describes empirical research methods employed in industry case studies focusing upon information, knowledge and experience in engineering design. The paper describes the methods, their suitability for the particular research aims, and the advantages and disadvantages of the methods, and describes two case studies in detail. The paper draws conclusions from the studies reviewed of the use of empirical research methods in industry.

Distributed teams are an increasingly common feature of New Product Development (NPD). Key to the success of these teams is the development of both short and longerterm shared understanding. Lack of shared understanding has been recognized as a significant challenge, particularly in the context globally distributed NPD activities. Poor shared understanding can ultimately result in delays and rework. One major antecedent of shared understanding development is question asking. This work uses a quasiexperimental study to test the impact of questioning support on different types of distributed teams, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. This extends theoretical insight into the development of shared understanding and contributes one of few empirical studies directly comparing the response characteristics of different team types. From a managerial perspective this work has implications for how distributed NPD teams can be more effectively supported, as well as how shared understanding development can be facilitated in the NPD process.

Many engineering companies experience new challenges when globalising product development. Global product development (GPD) is a relatively nascent research area, and previous research reveals the need for decision support frameworks. This research investigates how decisions are made when companies outsource or offshore product development tasks, and how these decisions can be improved. A brief literature review on existing research on GPD and decision making is given, followed by two case studies, where implications of decisions are investigated. The findings point towards further studies required for creating a decision support framework for managers to make better decisions in the future.

Biocards are formal descriptions of biological phenomena and their underlying functional principles. They are used in bioinspired design to document search results and to communicate the findings for use in the further design process. The present study explored the effect of abstraction level used in biocards. This was done in two workshops conducted with design students in Denmark and India. Students were given a design assignment and instructions for how to perform the BID ideation work. Half of the students were given biocards with abstract descriptions while the other half got biocards with concrete descriptions. The novelty of found solutions was evaluated by the students by rating novelty of each solution on a scale from 1 to 5. Mean values for abstract descriptions were 0,3 higher than for concrete descriptions indicating that more innovative solutions were found when students used biocards with abstract descriptions compared to concrete descriptions. The difference in mean value is significant with a confidence level better than 1%. It seems likely that more abstract descriptions in biocards helps avoiding design fixation in biomimetic design work.