Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Design Industrial, na Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, sob a orientação do Mestre Guido Giangregorio

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Design Industrial, na Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, sob a orientação do Professor Doutor José António de Oliveira Simões

Tese de mestrado. Design Industrial. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior Técnico. Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. 2007

Critical steps in the design process is the gathering of data, processing the data into a useful form of information (a design concept) which meets specific needs, passing this refined design solution down the path to production, where it is released into the larger environment. With in the designing process there are multiple feedback loops as the solution becomes more refined. Even as it reaches the final end user, other design refinement feedback loops continue as new and improved products or systems. Along with the interdisciplinary teams involved with the product/system development, the more complexity the product or system becomes the more critical the organization of the data becomes. This paper will present and test a concept of a design feedback and feed forward communication tool for product/system design that uses Dr. Walter A. Schaer s Three Functions of an Artifact as the methodological structure for design development. The essence of this design tool is the merging of a new communication system within an existing methodology of organizing complex systems into a morphological matrix, developed by Dr. Walter A. Schaer, based on the Charles Morris s work on semiotics. This communication tool is a new feedback / feed forward mechanism which correspond with the semiotic structure in a morphological matrix to assist the designer develop design solutions. The research will measure the success rate of the tool in the design process, examine of how the designers took advantage of the new tool, and evaluate their perception of its usefulness.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-151). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-151). Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of how marketing principles can be used to improve the process of new product design. Specifically, it examines the potential of a specific cognitive process, visual mental imagery, as a tool to help designers maximize the appeal of new products in the eyes of their customers. A conceptual framework is presented that describes a process through which visual mental imagery might influence the customer appeal of a design output. This is followed by two experiments which test the hypotheses that flow from this model. The experiments manipulate both the type of visual imagery utilized, and the incorporation of the customer in the imagery invoked (content of the imagery), in order to examine their effects on the usefulness, originality, and customer appeal of the resulting design. Consistent with the proposed framework and its hypotheses, visualization of the customer, as part of the imagery process, proved to enhance design usefulness when this imagery was imagination-based, but not when it was memory-based. Furthermore, use of imagination-based imagery resulted in more original designs than pure memory-based imagery. Finally, and most importantly, the use of customer visualization in combination with imagination-based imagery led to designs that were significantly more appealing to the customer. An analysis of covariance subsequently revealed that this improvement in customer appeal was mediated both by the perceived usefulness of the design, and by its degree of originality. The dissertation concludes with the integration of the experimental findings, and a discussion of the potential of visual imagery as a tool in the new product design process.

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