New Horizons
Feature Analysis of Research in Industrial Design and Engineering Design Within Multispace Design Model
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yuma Sakae, Yoshiyuki Matsuoka
Along with diversification of customer and market needs, it is now essential to develop products with concern of not only functional value of the products, but also customer value. Such product development would involve collaboration of industrial designers and engineering designers, but because their backgrounds often differ, it is challenging for them to work collaboratively. What this study focuses on is how the gap between industrial designers and engineering designers can be bridged, by investigating characteristics of the research in each design domain. Along with the investigation, it explores future research issues to be addressed for promoting the collaborative design between industrial designers and engineering designers, as well as to derive the collaborative design process to be conducted by addressing the issues. This study analyzes the differences between the central research themes dealt in industrial design and engineering design domains, by reviewing the papers published in Design Studies and Journal of Engineering Design during 2006-2015, from the viewpoint of multispace design model: an interdisciplinary model which allows comprehensive descriptions of various design object characteristics. The results show that much of the research in Design Studies has sought to understand the relation between design strategies and quality of design concepts, whereas the research in Journal of Engineering Design has strong interest on feasibility and producibility of design outputs and how the quality and performance of the outputs can be evaluated quantitatively. Based on these findings, numbers of addressing issues to be studied are discussed for achieving the enhancement of collaborative design.
Values, Culture, and Knowledge Systems in Design: The Role of Perspective, Subjectivity, and Identity
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ilze Eklsa (Loza)
The widespread reach of globalization processes throughout the world has fostered an amalgamative intertwining of cultural and religious systems, particularly in areas whose economic ties have steadily increased. This paper takes this reality as its starting point to explore the collision of the visual communication ethics of Europe and the religious and cultural backgrounds of the Middle East region. The influx of visual communication, such as advertisements, print media, and arts, to a region, can be indicators of shifts in identity and an acknowledgement of growing diversity. Not all visual communication, however, is universally welcomed. In the context of contemporary globalization processes, where cultural encounters are increasingly inevitable, often scenarios arise where creative industries fail to grasp how artifacts like advertisements, political cartoons, and artistic expressions will be received in certain regions. This paper thus considers the failed interaction between design and visual communication and cultural and religious systems via the incongruence of identity and cultural values. In addition, the paper explores the shifting functions of artistic graphic design practices, and analyzes the influence and artistic mobility of visual communication and graphic design between the Middle East and Europe. Numerous magazines, web, and newspaper advertisements appearing in the Middle East were collected and analyzed using a semiotic-driven approach, as this methodology is the most appropriate to analyse the meanings of advertisements and communication enduring a cultural transition.
Implementation of Design Thinking Approaches to Market Research for a Tech Start-up Value Proposition Strategy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatma nur Gökdeniz Zeynali
This study is performed in order to determine problems in Computer-Aided-Engineering (CAE) Market. A tech start-up company aims to serve a cloud-based CAE tool which is developed especially to resolve engineers’ daily issues. Anticipated problems in the market, which are slowness and poor interface, need to be validated by systematic market research for a well-directed value proposition and an efficient product-market fit. Therefore, design thinking methods are utilized to examine common problems in the CAE market. A questionnaire is prepared by authors and shared with engineers working for companies from diverse industries such as automotive, aviation, energy, R&D aerospace and more. It is spread out in social media to prevent biased answers in a definite sector. Open-ended questions are also put into the questionnaire to catch possible unknowns. Face-to-face interviews are held with a smaller group of five to get a deeper understanding. This group is asked to sort key features regarding its importance that is a DT approach named as card sorting. During the interviews another method, Moscow Chart, is used. It is found that, most important features are automatic mesh creation, user friendly interface, faster solution process, and problematic features of CAE software are multiphysics and security problems. As a conclusion, tech start-ups can be confident with their value proposition and product development aligned with this value. This makes the start-up team save time and penetrate the market faster.
MEMORY - Visual Storytelling
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Selma Ćatović Hughes
Using storytelling as a tool to weave the contextual, tactile, and unspoken text into a cohesive visual narrative, MEMORY is ongoing project encompassing the layering of visual information (images, text, screen shots, illustrations) to (re)interpret time, place, and memory. Fragmenting the whole, using micro-seconds of an event or isolating an episode out of a larger experience and filtering surrounding information, the conceptual process of abstraction begins to evoke particular reaction and set of emotion. Visual language and layers of interpretation attempt to bring the failing memory back to the viewer. By removing irrelevant, indistinct content and overlaying personal narratives, the visual storytelling explores the boundary of imaginary lines of time-space-event. While the narrative could be simple and clear, the poetic interpretation creates depth achieved by physical and online layering through photography, hierarchy and scale manipulation. Using three different studies (Fragments of a Blink, a fragmented micro-seconds of photo documentary, Digesting Reality, a 365 day photo diary, and Sarajevo: My Personal Story, a digital collage collection of war journals), MEMORY investigates the realm of visual possibilities to (re)tell a mundane story, capture a micro-moment and (re)embrace the past.
