Creativity is a requirement for excellence in product engineering. Despite its important role, the concept of creativity in engineering is challenging to articulate and define, both for practitioners and researchers. What makes technical creativity unique? Existing definitions often fall short of capturing the essence of creativity in technical contexts. The process of defining technical creativity is performed iteratively. In product engineering, creativity is not an abstract concept but a practical necessity, requiring motivation, imagination, expertise and experience. Therefore, two workshops with product engineers were held and the results were used to refine the definition. A shared understanding of technical creativity, that can be applied in daily engineering practice is created, enhancing both research and practical outcomes in product engineering.

With recent advancements in data-driven methods, there has been a growing interest in implementing AI in design. Despite this, a comprehensive understanding of the critical AI methods in design and how they support design practices remains lacking. To deepen our understanding, we conduct a comprehensive literature review and propose a novel, design-centric AI typology, associated with six AI assistance types for product service development. Our typology differs from traditional ones by shifting the focus from an algorithmic perspective to how models support design practice. Key findings highlight how these six design-centric AI methods support design practices in different ways, each with its own application challenges. Establishing a shared design-centric AI typology and assistance framework will enhance the understanding of how AI works differently and supports practitioners.

Robust Design is essential for developing high-quality products by minimizing their sensitivity to variation and uncertainties from diverse sources. Despite the wide range of approaches from industry and research, it faces challenges due to their siloed usage. Motivated to gain a better understanding of these challenges and to derive implications for how to overcome them, this paper discusses different viewpoints on Robust Design, taking into account different life cycle phases, domains, and system levels. This highlights the challenges of enhanced product complexity and shifting focuses, for instance, when it comes to cyber-physical systems or sustainable design, and the need for collaboration. Accordingly, the vision of a collaborative approach to Robust Design in a team is presented, in which the actors’ strengths are combined to further increase efficiency and significance.

This research is a first of its kind, building an understanding of the opinions of industry professionals on the imminent AI revolution. Semi-structured interviews with eight experienced engineers from a range of industries were conducted. Transcripts of interviews were coded revealing engineering practitioner’s understanding of, experience with, and vision for the use of AI technologies. The significance of the outcomes reveals the challenges industry face in realising an AI-driven design future and the actionable support that researchers and educators can provide to achieve this future.

This research aimed to explore the challenges designers face when using asynchronous collaboration methods across different time zones. A literature review revealed a knowledge gap in comparing synchronous and asynchronous collaboration methods and in comparing design students and professional practice. To fill this gap, a study was conducted with a group of engineering design students and practitioners asking them to conduct two design exercises, one synchronously and one asynchronously. The results highlighted unique challenges faced and that experience of design process had little effect on performance when using unfamiliar design tasks. The study contributes new insights and firsthand recommendations for design teams, educators and software developers.

Research into the foundational theories and management of software design remains limited. A 2010 workshop was convened to explore professional software development practices. The workshop sought to foster collaboration between the software engineering and design communities by examining foundational aspects of software design. Building on that workshop’s objectives, this paper investigates contemporary professional software design practice and its management within organizational contexts. It is informed by findings from three interviews with experienced software design managers. This work addresses an important gap by examining software design management through the lens of design rather than solely from a project management perspective. Additionally, it contributes to the development of a general theory of software design by integrating diverse theoretical frameworks.

The objective of this research is to explore the use of publicly available recall data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to extract Failure Modes and Effects Analysis data. This large data set was analysed using a Large Language Model chatbot. To assess the usefulness of priming the chatbot with this data, the chatbot was also asked to generate data without priming it with the recall data. This was performed on two specific products. It was found that primed-chatbot results were more specific and used technical terminology appropriate to the product being analysed. The proposed approach can be used by designers in the forward design process during new product development. The proposed approach provides designers with insight into potential failures, the associated consequences, their severity, and root causes as well.

The diverse knowledge levels among first-year mechanical engineering students lead to significant disparities in individual learning. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) offer a solution by providing tailored digital one-to-one instruction, bridging knowledge gaps, and equalizing learning outcomes. This thesis develops an ITS for design theory based on a knowledge-based engineering system, presenting an innovative model that integrates key features of ITS and knowledge-based systems. Implemented in a specialized environment, the system’s application and validation demonstrate its ability to meet context-sensitive design teaching requirements and provide adaptive tutoring.

The notion of “zero-sum” games describes situations characterized by scarcity and competition. Reframing these situations to yield more positive sum scenarios benefits from design strategies that can identify new sources of value, oriented toward out-comes that reward collective benefit over maximizing one’s individual strategy to win at others’ expense. This emergent practice, called Positive Sum Design, identifies and critiques the conditions that contribute to zero-sum bias in the interest of creatively reframing challenges and redesigning scenarios to encourage more cooperative strategies and pluralistic values. Positive Sum Design can be thus characterized as both a cultural critique and a set of creative practices applied toward that critique to help practitioners identify opportunities for transcending presumed constraints and transmuting zero sum games into non-zero-sum ones.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are increasingly explored to support design activities within the manufacturing context mainly driven by the development of AI technologies. However, few studies were conducted in practice from industrial perspectives. This research aims to understand the opportunities and challenges of AI in design in the real world. A workshop involving twenty-five participants from more than ten manufacturing firms is organised to collect relevant information. The opportunities and challenges identified are categorised by adopting a readily available data-driven design framework. Seven research directions are proposed accordingly to address the industry challenges and opportunities. This research serves as a guide for ensuring future AI in design research and applications are grounded in practice to bridge the gap between academic research and industry practice.

Due to climate change, sustainability has become a crucial topic in product development, while addressing it is associated with many challenges. Based on a literature review, those challenges are collected and clustered into nine categories and sub-categories defined for this purpose. Additionally, a research project is analysed. The exhibited challenges such as data availability versus influenceability, a lack of unified sustainability criteria, and decision-making trade-offs underscore the need for refined methodologies and collaboration in sustainability-oriented design. The differently sourced challenges are compared and the new challenges arising from the research project are sorted into the categories. Finally, possible reasons are discussed for why within the project only challenges from four out of nine categories are encountered.

Design has shifted from product manufacturing to tackling systems’ complexities in social innovation, focusing on participatory and human-centered design. Despite tools developed to enhance participation, differing perspectives complicate co-creation, necessitating better ways for interdependent thinking and communication. Designers must be embedded within the same social and cultural contexts as others, engaging in long-term participation. Establishing a design context that transcends temporary action but with a joint vision and tasks achievement is crucial. This study identifies varying levels of designers’ involvement and the differences of design context construction. Three modes are illustrated: (1) patching-based, (2) intertwining-based, and (3) expanding-based design context construction. This study advances design theory, encouraging designers to engage in multi-level collaboration.

This paper explores the role of concept maps in investigating and highlighting project alignment through shared understanding within a multidisciplinary, long-term, creative, practice-based project called “Fish Project.” By combining surveys and concept maps, the case study investigates team dynamics, skill diversity, and evolving project comprehension. The project aims to integrate augmented reality and geo-locative technologies to cultivate care, community, and collaborative design through a digital fish ecosystem. Analysing concept map: metadata, topology, and vocabulary, the research highlights gaps in team alignment and provides areas for cohesive project visioning and execution. The findings underscore the importance of iterative communication tools to bridge interdisciplinary boundaries and strengthen team coherence.

Designer and user have different perspectives on a product. This can lead to differences in their evaluation and classification in usage situations. Not least, products are evaluated from different backgrounds of experience. Communication between user and designer therefore appears to be crucial to support this mutual process of understanding. Prototyping is a widely used and recognised tool in development. The use of these as non-verbal instruments in communication, however, poses specific challenges for the designer, since ambiguities in interpretation are also possible here. The aim of this paper is therefore to develop a model that describes the communication between developer and user via prototypes to identify factors influencing the communication-process. Based on this communication model, initial implications for the design of prototypes will be derived

In the undergraduate design education curriculum, there is a growing recognition of the transformative potential of including bio-inspired design thinking concepts. This paper describes a capstone design project for senior engineering students at UGA that involved integrating bio-inspired AI and vision in K-12 lesson modules. Through the capstone design project, one student team developed a product that integrated bio-inspired vision in a lesson module for K6-8 incorporating state Standards of Learning. The results of student work in terms of final design/product and project experiences are presented and discussed. Implications for engaging K-12 teachers/students through bio-inspired AI and vision design concepts, and inspiring them to pursue STEM careers are discussed.

VR sketching tools have matured to a practical level, enabling use across various 3D design disciplines. Studies into VR sketching in design report beneficial affordances but are based on brief testing of tools in simulated tasks. Consequently, there is a knowledge deficit in understanding how to effectively integrate VR sketching into design projects. We address this gap with a case study on the sustained use of VR sketching in 10 automotive concept design projects over 10 months. In analysing designers’ logbooks, which captured design development, and post-study reflections, we show how the affordances of VR sketching outlined in literature manifest in practice. Specifically, we show how and when designers can exploit the precedence of 3D geometry embodied in VR sketches to advance the design process in terms of several dimensions of design fidelity. We highlight where process advantages are realised through (1) increased spatial fidelity, reducing the time required to iterate 2D sketches, (2) operational fidelity supporting dynamic testing of concept functionality via animation and (3) environmental fidelity supporting contextualising components and storytelling. As such, our findings highlight how and when practitioners can realise the comparative benefits of VR sketching alongside traditional sketching and 3d modelling during the concept design process.

To improve understanding of prototyping practice at the fuzzy front end of the design process, this article presents an analysis of a prototyping dataset captured during the IDEA challenge – a 4-day virtually hosted hackathon – using Pro2booth, a web-based prototype capture tool. The dataset comprised 203 prototypes created by four independent teams working in university labs across Europe supported by interviews carried out with each of the teams after the event. The results of the study provide nine key findings about prototyping at hackathons. These include elucidation of the purposes of prototypes in physical, digital and sketch domains and characterisation of teams’ prototyping practices and strategies. The most successful strategy focused on learning about the problem or solution space, often via physical prototypes rather than following more prescriptive ‘theoretical’ methodologies. Recommendations on prototyping strategies in hackathons or similar scenarios are provided, highlighting the importance of practical strategies that prioritise learning and adaptation. The results of this study raise the broader question to the wider research community of how design research and teaching should balance high-level strategic approaches with more hands-on ‘operational’ prototyping.

Design occurs in complex socio-technical contexts with conflicting stakeholder goals, requirements and other constraints. These limit solution options and create trade-offs where improvements relative to one goal come at the expense of performance on another. Little is known about how the design context influences trade-offs, or how designers interact with context to manage trade-offs. This article reports on an exploratory qualitative interview study investigating design trade-offs in relation to their socio-technical context. We identified nine themes reflecting engineering designers’ perceptions of the influence of the design context on their ability to resolve trade-offs. Findings suggest that the design context is both a source of trade-offs, and of knowledge and information that helps designers clarify ambiguous requirements to navigate and resolve trade-offs. The results provide insight into how designers interact with the design context to learn about the structure of their design problems and the degrees of freedom available to resolve trade-offs. The findings also contribute to understanding the effects of path dependencies in trade-off situations, and how the sequential distribution of design decisions over time constrains trade-off resolution. We discuss some of the goals and challenges of conducting rigorous qualitative research in design and identify potential directions for further research.

Large organisations are designing complex technology-based tools for their staff to use. In busy workplace environments, it can be difficult to get user input about a design. This paper describes the designer and user interactions in one such organisation, gaining insights that could be useful in other similar settings. The findings are based on a set of interviews with designers and researchers within the organisation. The paper identifies the current practices and constraints involved in understanding and capturing users' needs and discusses potential solutions.

Challenges in implementing digital health in clinical practice hinder its potential. The complexities posed by implementation could benefit from using design practices. To explore the current role of design practices in digital health implementation, designers in the Netherlands were interviewed. The preliminary results indicate that designers contribute to digital health implementation processes, especially in the early stages. Design practices are mainly used for engaging the users, testing concepts, aligning the ideas of stakeholders, and adapting interventions to fit within the contexts.