Principles of design composition are commonly understood to pertain to geometrical systems for arranging parts in assembling a formal whole. Connection to socio-cultural 'meaning' and relevance arguably occurs primarily via the assumed divinity or universality of these systems. In the contemporary architectural world, where explicitly held beliefs in fundamental, geometrically defined principles or values have dissipated, guiding principles of composition appear to be obsolete. This seems particularly true in relation to work that highlights process - or change, responsiveness, interactivity and adaptability - since this implies that the composition remains in flux and unable to be grounded in the composition of form. While processually inflected architecture (referred to here as 'processual architecture'), has been an active field since at least the 1960s, it has been significantly developed since design experiments involving digital computation intensified in t he 1990s. For this field of work, both highly celebrated and criticised as superficial or unethical, any connection to 'meaning' or value that might be offered by principles of composition would appear especially lost. This thesis reviews, counterpoises and reorients these assumptions, arguing a case for the value of processual architectural that has not been previously articulated. After the last 10 to 15 years of digital experimentation, it is clear that digital technology in itself is not the primary issue, but simply part of a complex equation. The thesis articulates this 'equation' through the model of emergence, which has been used in the field with increasing prominence in recent years. Through both practice-based research and theoretical development, a processually inflected theory of composition is proposed. This offers pathways through which the potential of processual architecture might be productively developed, aiming to open this field of work into a deeper engagement with pressing contemporary socio-political issues. The thesis demonstrates how the cultivation of particular modes of attention and engagement, found to hold an implicit but nevertheless amplified significance within processual architecture, make it possible to develop an embodied awareness pertaining to an 'ethico-aesthetic know-how'. This know-how is acquired and matured through attention to the affective dimensions that arise through design activity. The thesis highlight aspects of design process and products that are routinely suppressed in architectural discourse, generating new insights into the importance of affect for design process, design products and the relations between them. The ethical dimensions of such an approach become especially poignant through the explicit connection made between design activity and the practices of everyday life. Relationships between architecture and the social become re-energised, in a radically alternative manner to the social agendas of modernism or the more literary critiques of post-modernism. Through detailed discussions of the specific, local conditions with a series of design projects I have undertaken, I argue how and why close attention to the affective dimensions of design process offers new and productive ways to approach research through design practice. This offers a response to the calls for new 'post-critical' forms of research through empowering both sides of a previously held divide: theory and practice.

<p>Windy Scandinavia is the manufacturer of the luxury yacht Windy 52 Xanthos. There is a storage application in the aft sofa on the boat that doesn’t live up to the standard and functionality level that Windy represents. This report describes the mechanical design process of this storage application, which currently has bad functionality and is expensive for Windy in production.</p><p>The aim of the project was to develop the existing storage application to a low cost application. Simple and effective for Windy to produce and assemble, with the directives of access to the front or from above to the sofa.</p><p>A feasibility study of the existing application was made to get a picture of disadvantages and advantages to keep for further concepts.</p><p>The concept development included three steps; each step implied further development in level of detail. Starting with a range of concepts covering all different possibilities of access to the storage space, and ending up with a couple of concepts developed in detail with costs and knowledge of productions methods.</p><p>The result became a standard application; a hatch with gas dampers. The reasons why this became the result was because of the low cost, simplicity and functionality. Small modifications of existing moulds and no new components or production methods needed.</p><p>Conclusion of the result is that it fulfils the requirement specification and thereby is a proper result. The conceptual design phase generated many different concepts, from these concepts a result satisfying the requirements emerged.</p>

<p>This thesis examines innovation and design processes in small established companies. There is a great interest in this area yet paradoxically the area is under-researched, since most innovation research is done on large companies. The research questions are: How do small established companies carry out their innovation and design processes? and How does the context and novelty of the process and product affect the same processes?</p><p>The thesis is built on three research papers that used the research method of multiple case studies of different small established companies. The innovation and design processes found were highly context dependent and were facilitated by committed resources, a creative climate, vision, low family involvement, delegated power and authority, and linkages to external actors such as customers and users. Both experimental cyclical and linear structured design processes were found. The choice of structure is explained by the relative product and process novelty experienced by those developing the product innovation. Linear design processes worked within a low relative novelty situation and cyclical design processes worked no matter the relative novelty. The innovation and design processes found were informal, with a low usage of formal systematic design methods, except in the case of design processes for software. The use of formal systematic methods in small companies seems not always to be efficient, because many of the problems the methods are designed to solve are not present. Customers and users were found to play a large and important role in the innovation and design processes found and gave continuous feedback during the design processes. Innovation processes were found to be intertwined, yielding synergy effects, but it was common that resources were taken from the innovation processes for acute problems that threatened the cash flow. In sum, small established companies have the natural prerequisites to take advantage of lead-user inventions and cyclical design processes. Scarce resources were found to be the main factor hindering innovation, but the examined companies practiced several approaches to increase their resources or use existing scarce resources more efficiently in their innovation and design processes. Examples of these approaches include adopting lead-user inventions and reducing formality in the innovation and design processes.</p>

<p>There are a vast number of research and studies undertaken within the domain of user-centered design concerning the design process of an artifact, but still there are questions being raised of the relatively new and successful field of mobile design. During recent years mobile technology have surpassed the standardized thoughts of how to prototype and evaluate such a ubiquitous device. The paper addresses this predicament by discussing aspects of fidelity differences in an early design process of a mobile design. The example being presented refers to a design study of an iPhone-application, where two different types of prototypes were created and user tested, a low-fidelity paper prototype and a mixed-fidelity interactive prototype. The paper sets focus on the various differences between these fidelities closely related to the case. It also reflects on how mobile design approaches can mature during the early stages of a design process.</p>

The EEC (Electron Energy Corporation) in conjunction with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is researching the magnetic bearings for an alternative to conventional journal or ball bearings. The purpose of this research was to design and develop a high-temperature (1000ºF) hybrid Magnetic Bearing using High Temperature Permanent Magnets (HTPM), developed by the EEC for high performance jet engines at high speeds that supply loads of 500 lbf. Another objective is to design and build a test rig fixture to measure the load capacity of the designed bearing. The permanent magnet bias of the Homopolar radial magnetic bearing reduces the amount of current required for magnetic bearing operation. This reduces the power loss due to the coil current resistance and improves the system efficiency because the magnetic field of the HTPM can suspend the major portion of the static load on bearing. A high temperature radial magnetic bearing was designed via an iterative search employing 3D finite element based electromagnetic field simulations. The bearing was designed to produce 500 lbf of force at 1000ºF and the design weight is 48 lbs. The bias flux of the Homopolar radial bearing is produced by EEC HTPM to reduce the related ohmic losses of an electromagnetic circuit significantly. An experimental procedure was developed to measure actual load capacity of the designed bearing at the test rig. All the results obtained from the experiment were compiled and analyzed to determine the relation between bearing force, applied current and temperature.

The cooperative design approach, which research and practice have proven to be successful in several ways, is based on understanding users and their contexts through a variety of methods. This approach of working closely together with the users, however, is not the same thing as letting the users decide themselves what to design. Rather it means that designers in an interdisciplinary research team, working in close collaboration with the users, will use their design skills and collected knowledge about the users to produce good designs. Though cooperative design has proven successful, there are ways in which it could be improved. Cooperative design derived as a result of criticism about the lack of focus on users in the design process. In this sense, cooperative design has been the critical view, whereas socio-cultural perspectives such as gender, values and power relations have been either suppressed, deliberately or not, or not taken into consideration to the full extent that they could be. In contrast, three important elements of cultural studies research are meaning, identity and power. Research in this field examines the relationship between people and context, and between cultural and social practices, as well as on forces that change or preserve power structures. One aim of this thesis is to emphasise the importance of these issues within cooperative design. The focus of my thesis is to, through a phenomenological approach and a critical view of the different cooperative design projects I have participated in, discuss issues that have either been part of the projects’ structure, or have been imposed on the projects by circumstances that perhaps could not be foreseen. Three main issues that need further investigation to understand how they affect the design process are discussed: language and meaning, the individual in the group-oriented activities of cooperative design, and finally power relations and structures. I use myself as the subject through which the socio-cultural and critical viewpoints are shown. My aim is to show that there are aspects of the individual researcher in the cooperative design process that impact the design space and design. Through a critical discussion of the projects and related issues, this thesis argues that the cooperative design process can involve data and methods that we do not always know how to handle. As a result, we can miss important aspects of the research or end up in difficult dilemmas. Therefore, we need to better understand on what grounds we make design decisions in the cooperative design process, investigate what effect the individual has in group-oriented design processes, and examine how culture, language and power structures guide us and how we use methods such as triangulation. I believe that researchers need to evaluate our cooperative design process from the outside, with the goal of improving these processes. / QC 20100519

The thesis presents a research project in graphic design including the development of a symbol system that represents tastes of wine as consumer information. The thesis has three main chapters; design, theory and empirical foundation. The design chapter clarifies the design concept and its evolution from a traditional standpoint to its present state in the international area of design research as design theory. The theoretical chapter presents a map of concepts in order to explain problems and practical solutions in the design process. The concepts are based on the philosophical ideas of Ernst Cassirer and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and concern interpretation of sense information, symbols and signs, picture and image. The design of the symbol system concerns the experience of taste, as a translation from words to pictures. The empirical chapter comprehends both a description of the design process and of the empirical research. The method used is prototyping with a reference group of branch experts. The empirical research has evaluated the possibility to interpret, learn, use and understand the symbol system. The method used is a survey with questionnaires to a group of wine consumers

Nowadays warehousing became one of the most important and critical part in supply chain systems due to the fact that it consumes a considerable part of logistic cost. Designing phase of warehousing system is the most important part in warehousing since most of the strategic and tactical decisions should be taken in this phase. Majority of academic papers are primarily analysis oriented and does not give a systematic method and techniques as a basis for warehouse redesign. So there is a need to develop a structured procedure that can be applied for different type of warehouses. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to develop a process for redesigning production warehouses, and analyzing major problems during redesign steps. The thesis is designed as a case study, and a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection and data analysis. The methodology focuses around the warehousing process and redesign steps as described in the literature. Results of the thesis develop a seven steps procedure for redesigning of the production warehouse, also different problems and challenges are faced during redesign steps. It was tried to choose the best redesigning method which fit with the characteristics of the warehouse, in order to cover the space reduction of the warehouse with the consideration of existing facilities and reducing of cost. In addition, the performance of the current warehouse system was evaluated based on current design of the warehouse in order to avoid repeating of same mistake in redesign process. Storage assignment policy as one of the redesign steps was discussed and a framework for storage system of the components were suggested. The findings of the thesis to some extent can be applicable to other production warehouses. Further research is suggested for more specific results and new developed redesign methods for all types of warehouses.

Windy Scandinavia is the manufacturer of the luxury yacht Windy 52 Xanthos. There is a storage application in the aft sofa on the boat that doesn’t live up to the standard and functionality level that Windy represents. This report describes the mechanical design process of this storage application, which currently has bad functionality and is expensive for Windy in production. The aim of the project was to develop the existing storage application to a low cost application. Simple and effective for Windy to produce and assemble, with the directives of access to the front or from above to the sofa. A feasibility study of the existing application was made to get a picture of disadvantages and advantages to keep for further concepts. The concept development included three steps; each step implied further development in level of detail. Starting with a range of concepts covering all different possibilities of access to the storage space, and ending up with a couple of concepts developed in detail with costs and knowledge of productions methods. The result became a standard application; a hatch with gas dampers. The reasons why this became the result was because of the low cost, simplicity and functionality. Small modifications of existing moulds and no new components or production methods needed. Conclusion of the result is that it fulfils the requirement specification and thereby is a proper result. The conceptual design phase generated many different concepts, from these concepts a result satisfying the requirements emerged.

There are a vast number of research and studies undertaken within the domain of user-centered design concerning the design process of an artifact, but still there are questions being raised of the relatively new and successful field of mobile design. During recent years mobile technology have surpassed the standardized thoughts of how to prototype and evaluate such a ubiquitous device. The paper addresses this predicament by discussing aspects of fidelity differences in an early design process of a mobile design. The example being presented refers to a design study of an iPhone-application, where two different types of prototypes were created and user tested, a low-fidelity paper prototype and a mixed-fidelity interactive prototype. The paper sets focus on the various differences between these fidelities closely related to the case. It also reflects on how mobile design approaches can mature during the early stages of a design process.