The spatial arrangement of objects in residential environments is a crucial indicator of occupant behavior, shedding light on the complex dynamics of their interaction with the interior. This study introduces an object-based graph method for decoding urban home interiors, examining the co-presence of objects to uncover domestic behavioral patterns through indoor imagery analysis. By integrating centrality metrics with objects in graphs, we gain deeper insights into household behaviors, which provide empirical evidence for future interior design.

This paper proposes an approach for capital goods manufacturers to design Product-Service System (PSS) pilot projects by selecting appropriate products and customers. The authors conducted a single-case empirical study as a part of an ongoing action research project to maximise the learnings from a pilot project while minimising expenditure in extensive trial and error PSS solution testing. Two sets of criteria were elicited for product and customer selection, respectively, followed by a description of the ideal product and customer attributes for each of the three most common PSS archetypes.

Subjective product quality is a fundamental aspect to maintain a high level of user acceptance and to provide a good user experience. Prototypes can be used to evaluate subjective product quality in early design phases. We conducted an empirical study to examine the influence of different (re)presentations of prototypes determined by the chosen technology (2D image, VR, AR, 3D print) and the user's technology acceptance. Based on the results we recommend 2D images as most reliable for evaluating subjective product quality.

Engineering design has a broad variety of approaches, methods and methodologies to conduct, evaluate and validate research. This contribution focuses on empirical studies and divides existing approaches and classifies them according to a scheme with criteria and boundary conditions, such as participants (students, researchers), the length of the study, the incorporation of the study into the curriculum etc. There are certain ideas, challenges and recommended practices associated with each environment and scenario. Knowing them will help design method developers in engineering design who want to conduct empirical studies but have little or no experience with student participants. Therefore, conducted studies from the research institute are mapped onto the classification scheme and synthesized challenges and recommended practices associated with laboratory conditions and student participants will be presented.

As products are being developed over time and across organisations, the risk for unintended accumulation and mis-conception of margins allocated may occur. Accumulation of margins can result in over design, but also add risk due to under allocation. This paper describes the different terminology used in one organisation and shows the different roles margins play across the design process and in particular the how margins are a critical but often overlooked aspect of product platform design. The research was conducted in close collaboration with a truck manufacturer between 2013 and 2018. The objective was to gain understanding of the current use of margins, and associated concepts evolve along the product life cycle, across organisation and product platform representations. It was found that margins already play an important role throughout the entire design process; however, it is not recognised as a unified concept which is clearly communicated and tracked throughout the design process. Rather different stakeholders have different notions of margins and do not disclose the rationale behind adding margins or the amount that they have added. Margins also enabled designers to avoid design changes as existing components and systems can accommodate new requirements and thereby saving significant design time.

As model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is evolving, the need for evaluating MBSE approaches grows. Literature shows that there is an untested assertion in the MBSE community that complexity drives the adoption of MBSE. To assess this assertion and support the evaluation of MBSE, a principal component analysis was carried out on eight product and development characteristics using data collected in an MBSE course, resulting in organizational complexity, product complexity and inertia. To conclude, the method developed in this paper enables organisations to evaluate their MBSE adoption potential.

In order to meet an increasing internal variety, a solution can be the modularization of products. To motivate modularization projects throughout all phases of life, different effects of modular product families were collected in previous works on a literature basis. In this paper, a validation concept is presented, which will investigate these effects by using statements directly from industry representatives. In particular, the industry background is included in the evaluation to generate a more differentiated overall picture of impacts of modular product families.

In an era of increased automation in commuters’ everyday life, addressing the disconnect caused by taking the human out of the loop is critical. This paper describes the development of two extreme Companions for a public autonomous bus interface in Singapore. Attributes were identified in a benchmarking study and tested in a survey to investigate local users’ key preferences for must-have and ideal-to-have traits and Companion qualities. Finally, two contrasting Companion concepts are proposed and design strategies considering user expectations of Companions versus humans are discussed.

This paper aims to identify factors that influence creativity, and strives towards understanding the effect of representations, namely abstract and concrete design outcomes. Three conditions are compared; a control group, an abstract group, and a group provided with various example solutions. The implications of this work can strongly impact the formulation of design briefs, where the goal is to stimulate the creativity of design brief outcomes and examine their relationship to product awareness.

This paper presents experience-oriented aspects of the development of wearable assistive devices (exoskeletons) for industrial purposes, an area which has only begun to be explored. Our research aims to examine user acceptance criteria for assistive devices and understand the meaning of interaction with wearable assistive devices for the users. The resulting models deliver new insights about the importance of user experience for technology acceptance and should be generally considered in development processes of wearable assistive devices.

Augmented Reality (AR) is to be used extensively in today's digitized teaching in order to enable students to a more efficient learning. However, teaching content must not be only digitised, but must be communicated in a meaningful way. For this purpose, a generally valid flowchart has been developed, that allows lectures to choose the right content for AR experiences. In order to create this flowchart, empirical values from test runs were combined with pedagogically proven empirical values for good teaching.

While women are underrepresented in leadership across the industrial western world, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on how these stereotypes play out across cultural contexts, and their relative strengths. Our goal was to launch an ambitious comparative survey study of global corporations to increase knowledge on how gender stereotypes operate across cultures, and employee perceptions of gender equality in the workplace. The results provide a better understanding of the obstacles to women's professional development and identify levers for promoting gender diversity in large groups.

As time-to-market is getting shorter, customer needs have to be identified as early as possible in product development. Correctly applied, corporate foresight can give a glimpse into the future to anticipate such needs and thus gain a competitive advantage. A support tool to choose the appropriate method of foresight is not available yet. Thus, a literature study on foresight methods in industry is performed and a novel decision support tool is proposed which avoids high entrepreneurial risks. Based on the findings, potentials for future work are identified for different types of methods.

The present study analyzes the impact of a Design Thinking course on undergraduate students during an academic term. The impact was measured on three key outcomes: teamwork, problem-solving and creativity; using VALUE rubrics. The evaluation was carried out at three different moments during the course. Three types of evaluators participated: facilitators, students (self-evaluation) and peers. The results show statistically significant improvement on the three outcomes comparing students’ initial and final performance. Despite the promising results, the current study has some limitations.

Engineering design methods are typically evaluated via case studies, surveys, and experiments. Meanwhile, domains such as the health sciences as well as software engineering have developed further powerful evaluation approaches. The objective of this paper is to show how evaluation approaches from the health sciences and software engineering might further the evaluation of engineering design methods. We survey these approaches and show which approaches could be transferred to the evaluation of engineering design methods.

The question of whether international humanitarian law (IHL) has an impact on how armed conflicts are conducted is a controversial one. Sceptics claim that the law is virtually irrelevant in determining State behaviour in armed conflict. Proponents point to its importance in mitigating the suffering caused by war. This paper looks at recent scholarship from historians, political scientists, economists and lawyers that challenges traditional narratives held dear by the law's sceptics and proponents alike. It then discusses implications of these approaches for a current understanding of the role of IHL in today's armed conflicts. The new perspectives allow for a broader understanding of IHL's central issues and permit us to ask more pertinent questions when looking at the law with the aim of putting it to use for the protection of civilians.

This paper explores the use of heuristics as cognitive strategies invoked during the process of design. Heuristics are reasoning processes that do not guarantee the best solution, but often lead to potential solutions by providing a simple cognitive “shortcut.” We propose that designers use specific design heuristics to explore the problem space of potential designs, leading to the generation of creative solutions. We test whether design heuristics can be taught to novices, and suggest their use will facilitate the design process at multiple levels of instruction. In the present empirical study, we evaluate a set of six instructional heuristics and validate their effectiveness with product concepts generated by novice designers. Six hundred seventy-three drawings were created by 120 first-year college students under four instructional conditions. Drawings were coded according to their content, use of heuristics, creativity, and practicality. The most creative concepts emerged from the experimental conditions where heuristics were introduced. Heuristics appeared to help the participants “jump” to a new problem space, resulting in more varied designs, and a greater frequency of designs judged as more creative. Our findings suggest that simple demonstration of design heuristics may, at times, be sufficient to stimulate divergent thinking, perhaps because these heuristics are readily grasped and contextual application is not required. Based on these findings, a conceptual model for design education emphasizing the importance of using a variety of heuristics is proposed. This model suggests that learning can be enhanced through exposure to a variety of design heuristics, and can supplement formal education and foster personal development in design learning.

Rationale research in software development is a challenging area because although there is no shortage of advocates for its value, there is also no shortage of reasons for why rationale is unlikely to be captured in practice. Despite more than 30 years of research there still remains much uncertainty: how useful are the potential benefits and how insurmountable are the barriers? Will the value of the rationale (design and otherwise) justify the cost of collecting it? Although there have been numerous rationale research projects, many, if not most, received little or no empirical evaluation. There also have not been many studies examining what the needs are of the practitioners who would be supported by the rationale. This article discusses the “doom and gloom” predictions of rationale's failure, provides a survey of evaluations of rationale systems, and discusses what we hope is a brighter outlook for rationale research in the future. There are development standards and synergistic research areas that may help with rationale research and its acceptance in the software community with which we should be working. This article also presents the results of a pilot survey of software developers who were asked how they would envision using rationale and what they believe the most important barriers are. Although some results were as expected, there were also some surprises. Research on technology transfer indicates that, among other things, to transition successfully from research into practice we need to understand the need that is being met and demonstrate the value of our approach. Until we have determined how our work is needed by the people we are trying to help we will remain researching under uncertainty.