Most manufacturing companies have tested and adopted sustainable design methods to navigate their product's environmental transition. While successful at first in enhancing their environmental performance, these companies later struggle to pursue their environmental transition. This entails mastering two critical competencies: identifying transition unknowns, and fostering adequate design efforts. This action research with an innovative design intermediary - which has completed four sustainable packaging missions - reveals the specific design barriers encountered for environmental transition.

Generative Design (GD) is a design approach that uses algorithms to generate designs. This paper investigates the role of optimisation algorithms in GD process. We study how Pareto Fronts – a classical optimization algorithm output – help designers to browse the variety associated with a design problem. Thanks to the “splitting condition” from design theory, we show that valuable Pareto Fronts for designers are those that allow the exploration of a variety of design parameters without modifying substantially the performance of the designed solution. We call “Splitting Pareto Front” the Pareto Fronts that display this property and investigate how to generate them. We compare, on an electrical battery design problem, two optimization algorithms – NSGA-II and MAP-Elites – based on the design parameters variety they generate. Our results show that MAP-Elites generates Pareto Fronts that are more splitting than those generated by NSGA-II. We then discuss this result in term of the design process: which algorithm is best suited for which design task? We conclude with the importance for future research on Generative Design Algorithms (GDA) to study jointly the functioning of GDA and their expected contribution to the design process.

Data-pushed projects are common in companies and consist in the design of a model in order to deliver a desirable output. The design of data science models appears at the intersection of optimisation and creativity logic, with in both cases the presence of anomalies to a various extent but no clear design process.

This paper therefore proposes to study the possible design processes in data-pushed projects, highlighting distinct knowledge exploration logics and the role of anomalies in each. This research introduces a theoretical framework to study data-pushed projects and is based on design theory. Three case studies complete this theoretical work to examine each of the processes and test our hypothesis.

As a result, this paper derives three design processes adapted to data-pushed projects and put forward for each of them: 1) the various knowledge leveraged and generated and 2) the specific role of anomalies.

Engineering departments design infrastructure by applying rule systems. The latter are an old creation heritage, based on decades of engineering, that makes it possible to design and govern the operation of the physical heritage which is the infrastructure. Replacing the infrastructure is not sustainable in the meaning of grand challenges; renovating it by applying engineering rules is but could appear too expensive. The literature highlights situations where renovation by respecting the state of the art is too costly and so is the validation of new renovation rules. Are there forms of frugal validation that allow for sustainable renovation of existing systems? This paper tries to explore a third way, a renovation of the physical heritage from a renovation of the system of rules, conceiving in the system of rules, new propositions, and their validation. Using the C-K theory, a case analysis was performed within the French national rail network manager (SNCF Network), a company that has a historical engineering heritage and is at the same time implementing a renovation of it. The paper shows that the renovation of engineering departments’ creation heritage can go through frugal validation patterns and constructive proof logics.

In times of ‘grand challenges’, design theorists dealing with complex systems are facing a dilemma: grand challenges require rule breaking, but they also require the preservation, as much as possible, of existing resources, systems, know-how and societal values. Design for transition calls not for ‘creative destruction’, but for ‘creative preservation’. How do we model a design process that involves ‘creative preservation’?

Today, it is recognized that category/topos theory provides a solid foundation for modelling complex systems and their evolution in design processes. Category theory can account for a design process inside a given ‘theory of the object’, while topos theory and design theory can account for the phenomena whereby a design process is innovative to preserve the knowledge structure. At the heart of this creative preservation is sheafification.

In this study, we analyse the sheafification process using design theory. First, we characterize sheafification from a design perspective. Next, we propose a very simple illustration involving the sheafification of an ordinal 2 category presheaf. Finally, we show how sheafification can be used to enable ‘creative preservation’ in specific complex systems.

Idea evaluation is used to identify and select ideas for development as future innovations. However, approaching idea evaluation as a decision gate can limit the role of the person evaluating ideas, create fixation bias, and underutilise the person’s creative potential. Although studies show that during evaluation experts are able to engage in design activities, it is still not clear how they design and develop ideas. The aim of this study was to understand how experts develop ideas during evaluation. Using the think-aloud technique, we identify different ways in which experts develop ideas. Specifically, we show how experts transform initial idea concepts using iterative steps of elaboration and transformation of different idea components. Then, relying on concept-knowledge theory (C-K theory), we identify six types of reasoning that the experts use during idea evaluation. This helps us to distinguish between three different roles that experts can move between during evaluation: gatekeeper, designer managing fixation, and designer managing defixation. These findings suggest that there is value in viewing idea evaluation as a design process because it allows us to identify and leverage the experts’ knowledge and creativity to a fuller extent.

Generative design (GD) algorithms is a fast growing field. From the point of view of Design Science, this fast growth leads to wonder what exactly is 'generated' by GD algorithms and how? In the last decades, advances in design theory enabled to establish conditions and operators that characterize design generativity. Thus, it is now possible to study GD algorithms with the lenses of Design Science in order to reach a deeper and unified understanding of their generative techniques, their differences and, if possible, find new paths for improving their generativity.

In this paper, first, we rely on C-K ttheory to build a canonical model of GD, based independent of the field of application of the algorithm. This model shows that GD is generative if and only if it builds, not one single artefact, but a “topology of artefacts” that allows for design constructability, covering strategies, and functional comparability of designs. Second, we use the canonical model to compare four well documented and most advanced types of GD algorithms. From these cases, it appears that generating a topology enables the analyses of interdependences and the design of resilience.

In industry, there is at once a strong need for innovation and a need to preserve the existing system of production. Thus, although the literature insists on the necessity of the current change toward Industry 4.0, how to implement it remains problematic because the preservation of the factory is at stake. Moreover, the question of the evolution of the system depends on its innovative capability, but it is difficult to understand how a new rule can be designed and implemented in a factory. This tension between preservation and innovation is often explained in the literature as a process of creative destruction. Looking at the problem from another perspective, this article models the factory as a site of creative heritage, enabling creation within tradition, i.e., creating new rules while preserving the system of rules. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the model. The paper shows that design in the factory relies on the ability to validate solutions. To do so, the design process can explore and give new meaning to the existing rules. The role of innovation management is to choose the degree of revision of the rules and to make it possible.

Transforming data into added-value information is a recurrent issue in the context of “big data” phenomenon, as new sources of data become increasingly available. This paper proposes to offer a fresh look on how data and added-value information are linked through the design of specific models. This investigation is based on design theory, used as an analysis framework, and on a historical example in the Earth science field. It aims at unveiling the reasoning logic behind the design process of models combining data science and domain knowledge in specific ways, especially involving not only knowledge about the physical phenomena but also on the measuring instrument itself. More specifically, this paper shows how specific efforts on exploring the originality of the new instrument compared to existing ones can result in designing performant models to transform new sources of data into information. This also suggests several important competencies to be involved in the model-design process: (1) a detailed understanding of the limitations of existing models (2) the ability to explore both the originality of the new source of data compared to existing ones (3) the ability of leveraging independent data sources.

The aerospace industry experiences a considerable growth in product development costs. Many research works aim at identifying evolution laws characterizing this large-scale phenomenon and at developing design strategies which could help mitigate it. This paper aims to clarify the evolution dynamics governing this phenomenon by studying how the products delivered by these costly projects evolve with time. Increasing complexity is often held responsible for surging costs. If complexity is generally defined as the price to be paid for improving product functionalities, it is rarely specified whether the improvement affects existing functionalities or involves new ones. We aim to identify the patterns of cost growth which can be associated with phenomena of existing functionalities upgrade and new functionalities introduction, and to identify the associated design capabilities that designers need to deploy in order to keep product change and cost growth under control. To that end, we introduce a model which generates curves, each of which featuring a trend of cost growth, specific to a scenario of product evolution and being interpretable as a signature of a strategy used by designers.

In “Grande cuisine” creation and tradition co-evolve in a rich number of ways. Great chefs still use recipes from the 19th century and may also reinvent gastronomy itself. The creation heritage of culinary Art is the paradoxical capacity to both “respect” tradition and “break” its rules. Building on C-K theory, we show that such creative heritage needs multiple and independent layers of knowledge that “speak” of basic fixed objects. These properties correspond to general mathematical structures that we find in Topos theory. Thus, C-K/Topos predicts creative design strategies that can respect tradition in different ways. It also proves a form of “innovation within tradition” - “sheafification” in Topos words- that is not a compromise and builds on tradition itself. These findings fit with the lessons of great books of gastronomy. C-K/Topos has a wide scope of validity: it applies to any innovative design that needs preserving systemic structures, like engineering systems or social and environmental systems. C- K/Topos models with a high generality how local and radical innovation can warrant systems incremental change. C-K/Topos will have implications for teaching and research.

For more than two decades, mobile phone industry has shown that innovation is not only functional optimization and combination but can also be a "functional expansion”. Sometimes called radical or disruptive innovation, this phenomenon leads to the development of new method for engineers and designers. However, the intensity remains undemonstrated: is functional expansion a rare phenomenon (few products during very short periods of time) – or is it an intense phenomenon, that even might have accelerated in the last decades? To answer these questions, the paper overcomes two main obstacles: how to measure functional expansion? And what would be a law of functional expansion, that would enable to test the importance and newness of the phenomena? Building on recent advances on the measurement of innovation and on new computational models of design derived from most advanced design theories, this paper presents unique data on functional expansion of 8 consumer products and tests that functional expansion significantly accelerated in the mid 1990s. The paper confirms quantitatively that our societies are now in a new design regime, a regime of innovative design.

Scientific discoveries and inventions have long been established as two distinct and sequential activities. It has nonetheless been showed that projects aiming at producing both scientific discoveries and inventions could record impressive results. Our investigations are focusing on the creativity of collaborations outputs: a first agent is entailed to design a scientific discovery and another one invention. We use fixation effects as a performance measurement indicator for creativity based on Design Theory. We propose a first set of elements that can be suffering from fixation effects in both invention and scientific models designers reasoning. We propose a series of defixed inputs that could be shared between both designers to overcome their fixation effects. We highlight that if partners are engaged in one-way knowledge transfer it can conduct to “fixation traps”. We define a set of restrictive conditions that could conduct to a “cross-defixation process”: both actors would be able to create conjoint new inventions and scientific models in the non-fixed design path. In particular this process does not required designers to be defixed before starting the collaboration.

This paper explores the question of the design activity at the shop floor level. The design activity has been confined for a large part in the design and the methods office. However, a certain form of design adapted to the factory remains. It is necessary to solve the problems which appear during the manufacturing process and to improve the productivity. However another form of design can emerge; it has a stronger impact on the factory, since the rules of the manufacturing system are modified under its effect. The paper studies 21 cases of design in the Airbus factory at Saint-Nazaire. It shows that the design activity does exist at the shop floor level. It characterizes this activity distinguishing two types of design which can co-exist in a factory. It shows that the type of results reached is not the same according to the type of design implemented.

Strategic Research Agendas (SRA) bring to the research community a prospective and collective vision of a sector and are intended to provide directions for future research efforts. However, some promising innovative areas are not always foreseen in those documents, which raises the question of the relevance and adequacy of their coverage. While engineering design is often considered to translate SRA guidelines into product development, we believe it can also be of great help regarding the design of an SRA. In this paper, we will first address how to assess the scope of an SRA through a framework based on C-K theory, before exploring how to extend it, if need be. To answer those questions, we will examine a high-quality roadmap: the Electronic Components and Systems Strategic Research Agenda (ECS SRA). Our resulting method will provide us the means to assess SRA coverage and to ensure that interesting research areas are not forgotten unintentionally, in order to allow to a further enrichment of the document if needed.

Sketches are an essential tool for designers. They allow the externalizing of ideas and are therefore economic cognitively. Sketches also provide the designer with new insights, which play an important role in the emergence of ideas. However, some studies tend to show that sketching does not systematically have a positive effect on idea generation. Our research thus aims to analyze the generative effects of sketches by studying the way sketches support the design strategy of designers. We especially focus on the role of knowledge in comparison with concepts. Three sequences of sketches are analyzed employing C–K design theory; we show that drawings refer to both concepts and knowledge, but mostly to knowledge. In particular, sketching helps the architect mobilize knowledge distant from the initial topic. Moreover, the designer carries out through sketching an important work of knowledge structuration that we call ‘knowledge preordering’; by carefully selecting, testing and, if necessary, removing knowledge, the designer organizes a strategically built knowledge space. In particular, all elements involving modularity or determinism in the knowledge basis are abandoned. Such knowledge preordering thus allows the building of a splitting knowledge structure, which offers new rules for concept generation and enhances the production of original and disruptive ideas.

How can we prepare engineering students to work collectively on innovative design issues, involving ill-defined, “wicked” problems? Recent works have emphasized the need for students to learn to combine divergent and convergent thinking in a collaborative, controlled manner. From this perspective, teaching must help them overcome four types of obstacles or “fixation effects” (FEs) that are found in the generation of alternatives, knowledge acquisition, collaborative creativity, and creativity processes. We begin by showing that teaching based on concept–knowledge (C-K) theory can help to manage FEs because it helps to clarify them and then to overcome them by providing means of action. We show that C-K theory can provide scaffolding to improve project-based learning (PBL), in what we call project-based critical learning (PBCL). PBCL helps students be critical and give due thought to the main issues in innovative design education: FEs. We illustrate the PBCL process with several cases and show precisely where the FEs appear and how students are able to overcome them. We conclude by discussing two main criteria of any teaching method, both of which are usually difficult to address in situations of innovative design teaching. First, can the method be evaluated? Second, is the chosen case “realistic” enough? We show that C-K-based PBCL can be rigorously evaluated by teachers, and we discuss the circumstances in which a C-K-based PBCL may or may not be realistic.