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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

PurposeCompanies are increasingly engaged with global engineering networks through offshoring of product development activities from R&D to production. This creates many new challenges as operations get physically and culturally decoupled. The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding of how to effectively manage engineering offshoring activities in a context of global engineering networks. The main research question, therefore, is: “Can offshoring of engineering tasks be explained and managed using the concept of Global Engineering Networks (GEN)?” Effective approaches to handling the associated risks of engineering offshoring will be a key area of the investigation.Design/methodology/approachThe research approach is based on the engineering design research methodology developed by Blessing and Chakrabarti, including a descriptive phase and a prescriptive phase. Four case studies of large multinational corporations in Denmark were carried out. Data gathering was mainly documentary studies and interviews. The main data analysis approaches were coding (Strauss and Corbin) and pattern‐matching (Yin). The dataset was analysed using the GEN framework suggested by Zhang et al. and Zhang and Gregory.FindingsEngineering offshoring presents companies with challenges related to communication and knowledge sharing which is addressed through formal and informal mechanisms as well as a more streamlined operation. However, this did not remove the challenges. The GEN framework suggests a systematic approach to understanding global engineering networks through investigating their contextual features, critical capabilities to compete in a particular contextual circumstance, and configuration characteristics to deliver the capabilities. Using the GEN framework, the challenges faced by companies and the risks associated with their engineering offshoring activities can be explained as a mismatch between the required capabilities and the companies' ability to deliver these capabilities.Originality/valueThis paper provides new theoretical insight into both engineering offshoring and GEN theories by extending the GEN framework to address complications within engineering offshoring. This strengthens both academic fields, and will be able to help engineering managers to develop appropriate engineering network configurations for offshore engineering operations.

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.

This paper focuses upon investigating the characteristics of engineering changes and identifying the main reasons for changes arising during the different phases of the lifecycle of complex engineering products. Two case studies representing products with different development processes have been selected and change documentation analysed. The two cases selected were: (1) a variant design product, an aeroengine and (2) a customised product, drilling equipment for the oil industry. The change requests were analysed to understand their distribution and motivation across the lifecycle of the two products. The findings show that change requests peak during the manufacturing phase and indicate that the motivation for change varies throughout a product's lifecycle. The results provide insights into the factors to be considered during the development process in order to reduce the number of change requests from the later phases of a product's lifecycle and to support designers to efficiently address the unavoida...

This paper aims to investigate the knowledge generated during the later phases of the life cycle of a complex customised product and understand how this knowledge is transferred between projects and between different user groups. A series of four identical rigs for offshore drilling was selected as a case study, and the transfer of knowledge between the first two rigs was explored through two sets of interviews with the rig operators and the project management team. The expected knowledge transfer strategies that emerged from the first set of interviews were analysed and compared with the actual transfer mechanisms identified in the second set of interviews, and similarities and differences were investigated. It was found that the transfer of knowledge primarily occurred within the individual phases of the product’s life cycle, and there was poor transfer across the different phases.

Defining the aesthetic and emotional value of a product is an important consideration for its design. Furthermore, if several designers are faced with the task of creating an object that describes a certain emotion/perception (aggressive, soft, heavy, etc.), each is most likely to interpret the emotion/perception with different shapes composed of a set of different geometric features. The authors propose an automatic approach to formalize the relationships between geometric information of three-dimensional objects and the intended emotional content using fuzzy logic. In addition, the automatically generated fuzzy knowledge base was compared to the user's perceptions and to the manually constructed fuzzy knowledge base. The initial findings indicate that the approach is valid to formalize geometric information with perceptions and validate the author's manually developed fuzzy models.

This paper describes the findings from an empirical study carried out with engineers in senior roles within a large company manufacturing complex products. This research aimed to identify the types of knowledge that are important for design engineers. Twenty four knowledge categories were identified and the importance of these for design engineers in industry was investigated. In addition, the number of years of relevant experience required to become an expert in these types of knowledge was investigated. Knowledge related to the process was perceived as more important to those related to the product. However, the number of years to become an expert in process knowledge was found to be lower than for product knowledge, despite process knowledge being perceived as more important. The findings of this research contribute to the education and training of design engineers.

Tools to aid designers achieve specific perceptions through the aesthetics of their products are needed in order to compete and stand out in the current consumer society. This research aims to develop a spatial grammar to include perceptions. This is conducted through a case study where rules from previous research are used to guide the spatial grammar development and generation of solutions. Results show that it is possible to develop a spatial grammar to design for perception rules extracted from consumers using Semantic Differential (SD) scales and advanced statistics. These elements combined can generate a tool that provides designers with many new aesthetically pleasing solutions. The Spapper module within the FreeCAD software is used for the implementation. Initial work examines only two perception rules (simplicity and tall), and shows the need for the third (curves) to obtain the expected results. Future work should focus on expanding the shapes available for generation (i.e. 3D primitives) to include spheres, ellipsoids, tori, revolved profiles and sweeps, which could increase the number of valid solutions.

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.

This paper describes a methodology for developing ontologies for engineering design. The methodology combines a number of methods from social science and computer science, together with taxonomies developed in the field of engineering design. A case study is used throughout the paper focusing upon the use of an ontology for searching, indexing and retrieving of engineering knowledge. An ontology for indexing design knowledge can assist the users to formulate their queries when searching for engineering design knowledge. The root concepts of the ontology were elicited from engineering designers during an empirical research study. These formed individual taxonomies within the ontology and were validated through indexing a set of ninety-two documents. Relationships between concepts are extracted as the ontology is populated with instances. The identified root concepts were found to be complete and sufficient for the purpose of indexing. A thesaurus and an automatic classification are being developed as a result of this evaluation. The methodology employed during the test case is presented in this paper. There are six separate stages, which are presented together with the research methods employed for each stage and the evaluation of each stage. The main contribution of this research is the development of a methodology to allow researchers and industry to create ontologies for their particular purpose and to develop a thesaurus for the terms within the ontology. The methodology is based upon empirical research and hence, focuses upon understanding a user’s domain models as opposed to extracting an ontology from documentation.Copyright © 2005 by ASME

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.

A long-term research project is being undertaken to understand how to support engineering designers through the provision of appropriate knowledge during the design process. Empirical research already carried out within the aerospace industry found that novice designers were aware of their knowledge needs in only 35% of their queries. In addition, observations of experienced and novice designers identified design strategies employed by experienced designers. The aim of this research was to develop and evaluate a method of support for designers based upon these findings. This paper describes the development of the method and its preliminary evaluation within the aerospace industry. The evaluation indicated that the method was able to reduce the number of inappropriate questions asked by novice designers.

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.

Observational studies of engineering design activities can inform the research community on the problem solving models that are employed by professional engineers. Design is defined as an ill-defined problem which includes both engineering design and software design, hence understanding problem solving models from other design domains is of interest to the engineering design community. For this paper an observational study of two software design sessions performed for the workshop on “Studying professional Software Design” is compared to analysis from engineering design. These findings provide useful insights of how software designers move from a problem domain to a solution domain and the commonalities between software designers’ and engineering designers’ design activities. The software designers were found to move quickly to a detailed design phase, employ co-evolution and adopt a predominantly depth-first approach to developing their solutions. A mapping between the activities of engineering design onto the activities of a general model of software design is also presented. A discussion about the potential consequences of the key findings across the design domains is described.Copyright © 2012 by ASME

This paper describes a study to understand the use of analogies by design engineers with different levels of experience in an adaptive design domain. Protocol analyses of 12 design engineers have been analyzed to understand the functions and reasoning of the analogies. The protocols are real-world data from the aerospace industry. The findings indicate a significant difference in both the use of analogies by novices and experienced designers and the reasoning from the analogies. Novices were found to predominantly transfer information related to the geometric properties without explicit reference to relevant design issues or to the appropriateness of applying the analogy, whereas experienced designers tended to use analogies for problem solving and problem identification. Experienced designers were found to use the analogy to reason about the function of a component and the predicted behavior of the component, whereas the novices seem to lack such reasoning processes.

The aesthetics of a product influences the decisions made by consumers when purchasing products. Research has shown that designers are not always successful in creating a product with the desired perception amongst its users. Hence methods and tools which can support the designer in predicting how the aesthetics of their products are likely to be perceived are of value. In this paper the authors propose an approach to formalize the relationship between geometric information of a 3D object and the intended emotion using fuzzy logic. 3D objects (shapes) created by design engineering students to evoke a certain perception were analysed. Three different fuzzy logic models, with different input variables, for evaluating massiveness and lightness in a form are proposed. The authors identified geometric information as inputs of the fuzzy model and developed a set of fuzzy if/then rules to map the relationships between the fuzzy sets on each input premise and the output premise. In our case the output premise of the fuzzy logic model is the level of belonging to the design context (emotion). An evaluation of how users perceived the shapes was conducted to validate the fuzzy logic models and showed a high correlation between the fuzzy logic model and user perception. The models show the possibility of creating tools to support designers with forms to evoke the desired perceptions amongst consumers.Copyright © 2009 by ASME

This paper presents a comparison of two previous and separate efforts to develop an ontology in the engineering design domain, together with an ontology proposal from which ontologies for a specific application may be derived. The research contrasts an empirical, user-centered approach to developing the ontology engineering design integrated taxonomies (EDIT) with a theoretical approach in which concepts and relations are elicited from engineering design theories design ontology (DO). The limitations and advantages of each approach are discussed. The research methodology adopted is to map the ontology through examining each of the concepts and relations contained within each of the ontologies DO and EDIT with respect to the other. The comparison process results in an examination of both ontologies, with a few changes resulting from this. The importance of the two different approaches, one that is theoretically sound and another that is applicable, is recognized and argued. Finally, the merged ontology for engineering design is proposed as a template ontology that can be tailored by researchers and practitioners for a specific context.

It is widely recognized, both in industry and academia, that clear strategies in knowledge transfer positively influence the success of a firm. A firm should support the transfer of knowledge by standardizing communication channels within and across departments, based upon personalization, codification or a combination of these two strategies. The characteristics of the business influence the choice of communication channels used for knowledge transfer. This paper presents a case study exploring the transfer of knowledge within and across projects, specifically the transfer of service knowledge in the case of complex machinery. The strategies used for knowledge transfer were analysed and compared with the expected transfer mechanisms, similarities and differences were investigated and are described. A family of four identical rigs for offshore drilling was the selected case. The transfer of experience across the rigs during the commissioning phase of the first and the second rigs of the series was explored through interviews with the operators and the project management team. Differences between the expected knowledge transfer strategy, focused upon the moving of rig personnel and reusing of lessons learnt from one rig to the next, and the actual situation emerged. Various approaches for transferring knowledge were elicited and analysed with regard to the types of knowledge that were transferred and the context in which they were used. This study indicates factors that should be considered whilst designing a knowledge management system to support the systematic reuse of service knowledge.Copyright © 2009 by ASME

When developing procedures such as tools, methods and frameworks to support the development of new products, one of the challenges is ensuring their successful implementation. This paper describes a study of the development and use of such design-procedures with primary focus on the new product development process-model, its supporting methods and handling of knowledge. Semi-structured interviews with 20 participants have been carried out to understand the use of procedures. All the interviews were conducted in a company, which develops large complex equipment for oil rigs. The findings suggest that a complex understanding of procedures and reasons for divergence needs to be adopted, where implicit as well as explicit procedures are recognised and managed. Three distinct types of implicit procedures were uncovered through the study: 1) historical implicit procedures; 2) social interpretations of explicit procedures and; 3) implicit procedures supporting needs that are not catered for by the explicit procedures. In this understanding, a procedure can be any kind of method, tool or framework used to support design engineers. Furthermore, the study discusses a variety of recommended actions, depending on the type of procedure and the reason for non-conformance. Recommendations for corrective actions are proposed and feedback from managers directly involved in developing and applying the procedures are collected, to evaluate them.

This paper focuses upon understanding the characteristics of engineering changes, in particular changes that emerge during the service phase of complex products, and on how these changes can be related to the product development process. For this purpose, a set of engineering change reports from an aerospace engine has been analyzed and the findings have been compared with change documentation from drilling machinery for the oil industry. These findings give insights into which phases of the design process should be modified in order to reduce the number of change requests from the service phase and to enable designers to efficiently answer the unavoidable change requests. This can be used to improve the product development process in order to take into account the factors leading to changes.Copyright © 2008 by ASME

The long-term aim of this research is to develop a method of indexing design knowledge that is intuitive to engineering designers and therefore assists the designers to retrieve relevant information. This paper describes the development and preliminary evaluation of a method of indexing design knowledge. The concepts for the method have been elicited from designers’ descriptions of the design process. The method has been evaluated by indexing 92 reports related to one particular aero-engine.

This paper describes a software tool called DRed (the D esign R ationale ed itor), that allows engineering designers to record their design rationale (DR) at the time of its generation and deliberation. DRed is one of many proposed derivatives of the venerable IBIS concept, but by contrast with other tools of this type, practicing designers appear surprisingly willing to use it. DRed allows the issues addressed, options considered, and associated arguments for and against, to be captured graphically. The software, despite still being essentially a research prototype, is already in use on high profile design projects in an international aerospace company, including the presentation of results of design work to external customers. The paper compares DRed with other IBIS-derived software tools, to explain how it addresses problems that seem to have made them unsuitable for routine use by designers. In addition to the capture and presentation of the DR itself, the set of linked DR graphs can be used to provide a map of the contents of an electronic Design Folder, containing all the documents created by an individual or team during a design project. The structure of the knowledge model instantiated in such a Design Folder is described. By reprising a design case study published at the DTM 2003 conference, concerning the design of a Mobile Arm Support (MAS), the DRed knowledge model is compared with the previously proposed Design Data Model (DDM), to show how it addresses the shortcomings identified in the DDM. Finally the methodology and results of the preliminary evaluation of the use of DRed by aerospace designers are presented.Copyright © 2004 by ASME

The industrial world is changing rapidly and engineering organisations need to adapt fast to remain in business. Some of the pressures faced by engineering managers include: (1) the trend towards globalisation and the reliance on IT; (2) the increasing commercial pressures which demand continual improvements in quality, shorter lead times and reduced costs; (3) the increasing complexity of both products and processes; (4) the problems of retaining and retrieving knowledge and experience; and (5) the need to move towards sustainable development.

Users react to products without knowing the intended Kansei integrated into them by the designer. Human beings are equipped with variable preference mechanism. It is argued that human attributes result from three different levels of brain mechanism: the visceral; the behavioural; and the reflective levels. This paper focuses upon the visceral level through the building of a link between geometric properties of non-functional 3D forms and the human perception of these by users. This link is created using a genetic algorithm combined with a fuzzy logic decision support system. Human evaluations of the non-functional 3D shapes against two contrary perception adjectives (massive and light) are used as the learning data set for the genetic algorithm. Eight fuzzy models were developed using different sets of quantitative geometric properties as inputs resulting into different sets of fuzzy design rules. Correlations as high as 99%, between fuzzy and human perception, were obtained.

This paper investigates the impacts companies have experienced as a result of globalising their product development process, and how they have been addressed. Data was collected through case studies of Danish multinational corporations. This paper presents a unique look into global product development through an investigation of its impact on the organisation, the product development process, and the product. Furthermore, it shows the solutions companies employ to minimise the risks of globalisation and the limitations of these solutions. Finally, this paper provides information on the likely causes for these limitations, and suggests how these can be addressed.

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.

An important aspect of artifact/product design is defining the aesthetic and emotional value. The success of a product is not only dependent on it’s functionality but also on the emotional value that it creates to its user. However, if several designers are faced with a task to create an object that would evoke a certain emotion (aggressive, soft, heavy, friendly, etc.) each would most likely interpret the emotion with a different set of geometric features and shapes. In this paper the authors propose an approach to formalize the relationship between geometric information of a 3D object and the intended emotion using fuzzy logic. To achieve this; 3D objects (shapes) created by design engineering students to match a set of words/emotions were analyzed. The authors identified geometric information as inputs of the fuzzy model and developed a set of fuzzy if/then rules to map the relationships between the fuzzy sets on each input premise and the output premise. In our case the output premise of the fuzzy logic model is the level of belonging to the design context (emotion). An evaluation of how users perceived the shapes was conducted to validate the fuzzy logic model and showed a high correlation between the fuzzy logic model and user perception.Copyright © 2008 by ASME