Volvo Construction Equipment is considering applying modular design to their organisation in order to constrain the growing intangible information and parts assortment within the company, and as well to enable a rearrangement of production, sales and logistics in the near future of organisational growth and industrial footprint. Hence the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the opportunities and threats of implementing modular design to Volvo Construction Equipment. The analysis is scoped on the generic aspects of modularity and the organisational weaknesses within Volvo CE towards implementing a new organisational structure, product design and production with modular design. Modularity enables the company to move towards decupling the constraints of tangible sales and provides an opportunity to offer Product Service Systems as a Total Solution for each individual customer. By implementing the authors common knowledge and education within engineering revolving tangible and intangible products and services alongside with innovation, together with informal interviews of stakeholders, the results of the thesis was reached. The analysis of the results was reached by implementing Design Research Methodology to the structure of the thesis, research method and interviews made. There is a distinct opportunity for Volvo CE to implement modular design since the informational flows, innovation, research and development is enhanced by a correct modular design. Although there is a distinct risk in changing a well-established product design, development process and organisational structure, the opportunities to create a product service system strategy and to re harvest and recycle value within the company with modularity outweigh the risk. Incomprehension of how to optimize a modular design may amplify the reasons why Volvo CE is considering revising their products and organisation with modularity, thus the authors recommend implementing a generic and specific education in modularity within Volvo CE to ensure a shared language of modularity and enhance traceability of the development within the company. In order to enhance the organisational velocity around development, the authors also recommend a new computer environment which enables the different disciplines of engineering and marketing to modularise the product, services and processes while keeping the comprehension of the subject close to hand. This enables the organisational structure to change and improve towards modular deployment and to further accelerate Volvo CE’s growth, market share and revenue. / Volvo Construction Equipment överväger att tillämpa en modulär design till sin organisation i syfte att begränsa den växande immateriella information och det växande sortiment av delar inom företaget som finns idag. Volvo ser även till möjligheterna med modulär design för att möjliggöra en omflyttning av produktion, försäljning och logistik inom den närmaste framtiden för organisatorisk tillväxt och för att minska det industriella fotavtrycket. Därav syftet med denna uppsats; att undersöka möjligheter och hot för att genomföra modulär design i Volvo Construction Equipment. Analysen är fokuserad på generiska aspekter på modularitet och organisatoriska svagheter inom Volvo CE mot att genomföra en ny organisationsstruktur, produktdesign och produktion med modulär design. Modularitet möjliggör för företaget att gå mot att minska begränsningen av materiell försäljning och ger en möjlighet att erbjuda system med Product och Service lösningar som en helhetslösning för varje enskild kund. Genom att implementera författarnas gemensamma kunskap och utbildning inom teknik roterande kring materiella och immateriella produkter samt tjänster tillsammans med innovation, och med informella intervjuer av intressenter, har resultaten i denna avhandling uppnåtts. Analysen av resultaten uppnåddes genom att implementera metodiken Design Research Methodology till strukturen, forskningsmetod och gjorda intervjuer i avhandlingen. Det finns en tydlig möjlighet för Volvo CE att genomföra modulär design eftersom de informativa flöden, innovation, forskning och utveckling förstärks av en korrekt modulär design. Även om det finns en klar risk i att ändra en väletablerad produkts design, utveckling process och organisations struktur, är möjligheterna i att skapa en produkt strategi med servicesystem och att återvinna återvinna värde i företaget med modularitet väl värt risken. Oförståelse för hur man optimerar en modulär design kan innebära ytterligare risker och förklarar varför Volvo CE överväger revidera sina produkter och organisation med en ny design, och då kanske en modulär struktur. Detta har lett till att författarna rekommenderar att genomföra en allmän och specifik utbildning i modularitet inom Volvo CE för att säkerställa ett gemensamt språk för modularitet och öka spårbarheten av utvecklingen inom företaget. För att öka den organisatoriska hastigheten kring utveckling, rekommenderar författarna också en ny datormiljö som gör att de olika disciplinerna i teknik och marknadsföring ligger närmre till hands för att modularisera produkter, tjänster och processer samtidigt som förståelsen av ämnet blir enklare att uppnå. Detta maximerar effektiviteten i den organisatoriska strukturen för att förändra och förbättra mot en modulär utbyggnad och att ytterligare påskynda Volvo CE : s tillväxt , marknadsandelar och intäkter

H2 Green Steel AB was founded in 2020 to build a large-scale green steel factory in Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden. The factory consists of green hydrogen production, iron production and steel production. In 2030, the factory’s annual steel production will be 5 million tonnes annually. The objective of the thesis was to build a concept to improve a recommendation for a Hydrogenproduction site in an early stage of engineering. It included improving the understanding and basis for three criteria. The first criteria consisted of technical and customer requirements, seeing the requirements for the specific application of hydrogen as the critical factor. The second criteria consisted of further investigating how existing interfaces and utilities can be used in hydrogen production and building the basis for qualification. The third criteria consisted of adapting the concept to existing internal design tools by building it forward compatible. The thesis was initiated by bench-marking possible activities related to the recommendation acting as technical support and extensions to existing solutions. The research approach used was Design Research Methodology (DRM), held as the framework for execution. The result from the thesis delivers a database model built upon three linked packages providing a methodology of increased technical information, forward compatibility and a modular approach for design.

The research reported and discussed in this thesis represents a novel approach to define custom gestures and to include gesture-based interaction in user interfaces of the software systems with the aim of help to solve the problems found in the related literature about the development of gesture-based user interfaces. The research is conducted according to Design Science methodology that is based on the design and investigation of artefacts in a context. In this thesis, the new artefact is the model-driven method to include gesture-based interaction in user interfaces. This methodology considers two cycles: the main cycle is an engineering cycle where we design a model-driven method to include interaction based on gestures. The second cycle is the research cycle, we define two research cycles: the first research cycle corresponds to the validation of the proposed method with an empirical evaluation and the second cycle corresponds to the technical action research to validate the method in an industrial context. Additionally, Design Science provides us the clues on how to conduct the research, be rigorous, and put in practice scientific rules. Besides Design Science has been a key issue for organising our research, we acknowledge the application of this framework since it has helps us to report clearly our findings. The thesis presents a theoretical framework introducing concepts related with the research performed, followed by a state of the art where we know about the related work in three areas: Human-computer Interaction, Model-driven paradigm in Human-Computer Interaction and Empirical Software Engineering. The design and implementation of gestUI is presented following the Model-driven Paradigm and the Model-View-Controller design pattern. Then, we performed two evaluations of gestUI: (i) an empirical evaluation based on ISO 25062-2006 to evaluate usability considering effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Satisfaction is measured with perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention of use, and (ii) a technical action research to evaluate user experience and usability. We use Model Evaluation Method, User Experience Questionnaire and Microsoft Reaction cards as guides to perform the aforementioned evaluations. The contributions of our thesis, limitations of the tool support and the approach are discussed and further work are presented. / La investigación reportada y discutida en esta tesis representa un método nuevo para definir gestos personalizados y para incluir interacción basada en gestos en interfaces de usuario de sistemas software con el objetivo de ayudar a resolver los problemas encontrados en la literatura relacionada respecto al desarrollo de interfaces basadas en gestos de usuarios. Este trabajo de investigación ha sido realizado de acuerdo a la metodología Ciencia del Diseño, que está basada en el diseño e investigación de artefactos en un contexto. En esta tesis, el nuevo artefacto es el método dirigido por modelos para incluir interacción basada en gestos en interfaces de usuario. Esta metodología considera dos ciclos: el ciclo principal, denominado ciclo de ingeniería, donde se ha diseñado un método dirigido por modelos para incluir interacción basada en gestos. El segundo ciclo es el ciclo de investigación, donde se definen dos ciclos de este tipo. El primero corresponde a la validación del método propuesto con una evaluación empírica y el segundo ciclo corresponde a un Technical Action Research para validar el método en un contexto industrial. Adicionalmente, Ciencia del Diseño provee las claves sobre como conducir la investigación, sobre cómo ser riguroso y poner en práctica reglas científicas. Además, Ciencia del Diseño ha sido un recurso clave para organizar la investigación realizada en esta tesis. Nosotros reconocemos la aplicación de este marco de trabajo puesto que nos ayuda a reportar claramente nuestros hallazgos. Esta tesis presenta un marco teórico introduciendo conceptos relacionados con la investigación realizada, seguido por un estado del arte donde conocemos acerca del trabajo relacionado en tres áreas: Interacción Humano-Ordenador, paradigma dirigido por modelos en Interacción Humano-Ordenador e Ingeniería de Software Empírica. El diseño e implementación de gestUI es presentado siguiendo el paradigma dirigido por modelos y el patrón de diseño Modelo-Vista-Controlador. Luego, nosotros hemos realizado dos evaluaciones de gestUI: (i) una evaluación empírica basada en ISO 25062-2006 para evaluar la usabilidad considerando efectividad, eficiencia y satisfacción. Satisfacción es medida por medio de la facilidad de uso percibida, utilidad percibida e intención de uso; y, (ii) un Technical Action Research para evaluar la experiencia del usuario y la usabilidad. Nosotros hemos usado Model Evaluation Method, User Experience Questionnaire y Microsoft Reaction Cards como guías para realizar las evaluaciones antes mencionadas. Las contribuciones de nuestra tesis, limitaciones del método y de la herramienta de soporte, así como el trabajo futuro son discutidas y presentadas. / La investigació reportada i discutida en aquesta tesi representa un mètode per definir gests personalitzats i per incloure interacció basada en gests en interfícies d'usuari de sistemes de programari. L'objectiu és ajudar a resoldre els problemes trobats en la literatura relacionada al desenvolupament d'interfícies basades en gests d'usuaris. Aquest treball d'investigació ha sigut realitzat d'acord a la metodologia Ciència del Diseny, que està basada en el disseny i investigació d'artefactes en un context. En aquesta tesi, el nou artefacte és el mètode dirigit per models per incloure interacció basada en gests en interfícies d'usuari. Aquesta metodologia es considerada en dos cicles: el cicle principal, denominat cicle d'enginyeria, on es dissenya un mètode dirigit per models per incloure interacció basada en gestos. El segon cicle és el cicle de la investigació, on es defineixen dos cicles d'aquest tipus. El primer es correspon a la validació del mètode proposat amb una avaluació empírica i el segon cicle es correspon a un Technical Action Research per validar el mètode en un context industrial. Addicionalment, Ciència del Disseny proveeix les claus sobre com conduir la investigació, sobre com ser rigorós i ficar en pràctica regles científiques. A més a més, Ciència del Disseny ha sigut un recurs clau per organitzar la investigació realitzada en aquesta tesi. Nosaltres reconeixem l'aplicació d'aquest marc de treball donat que ens ajuda a reportar clarament les nostres troballes. Aquesta tesi presenta un marc teòric introduint conceptes relacionats amb la investigació realitzada, seguit per un estat del art on coneixem a prop el treball realitzat en tres àrees: Interacció Humà-Ordinador, paradigma dirigit per models en la Interacció Humà-Ordinador i Enginyeria del Programari Empírica. El disseny i implementació de gestUI es presenta mitjançant el paradigma dirigit per models i el patró de disseny Model-Vista-Controlador. Després, nosaltres hem realitzat dos avaluacions de gestUI: (i) una avaluació empírica basada en ISO 25062-2006 per avaluar la usabilitat considerant efectivitat, eficiència i satisfacció. Satisfacció es mesura mitjançant la facilitat d'ús percebuda, utilitat percebuda i intenció d'ús; (ii) un Technical Action Research per avaluar l'experiència del usuari i la usabilitat. Nosaltres hem usat Model Evaluation Method, User Experience Questionnaire i Microsoft Reaction Cards com guies per realitzar les avaluacions mencionades. Les contribucions de la nostra tesi, limitacions del mètode i de la ferramenta de suport així com el treball futur són discutides i presentades. / Parra González, LO. (2017). gestUI: a model-driven method for including gesture-based interaction in user interfaces [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/89090

This is an unconventional study, which addresses the thematic field and the esoteric nature and essence of Corporate Identity. The thesis concentrates in the understanding of Corporate Identity aiming towards an holistic explanation of the concept appropriate for practical multidisciplinary use. It proposes a systematic methodology and establishes a design practitioner perspective, which aims at reliable co-ordination and control of Corporate Identity operations. The methodology to structure the literature A Strategic methodology of questions was developed to operate as a research methodology, which explored Corporate Identity, by revealing the “Form” of its concepts, its connections and its anomalies, as they occur extensively in the published and public domain. The review of published literature was carried out through a discussion process of published material subjected to diagnostic questions; through which the Terminology, Functional concepts, Methodologies are reported to influence Corporate Identity; contributing to the understanding of Corporate Identity’s Form and to further clarifying research issues. Literature review, was subjected to discussion, provisional observations and conclusions and is presented into 8 chapters. The Strategic Enquiry continued and extended on discussing Corporate Identity Field Examples, to interrogate real life experience material, to reveal an extended understanding of overt and covert issues of Corporate Identity’s Form, and to focus research planning accordingly. This process contributed into bringing together clusters of relevant information, gleaned from a rather fragmented published literature, thus forming a more holistic and broader understanding of the concept. However, from this holistic picture it was observed that certain essential texts are missing. Hence a further information literature search, was carried out which reported on texts which are not sufficiently or at all covered in specialised Corporate Identity literature but were regognised by this researcher as essential for a meaningful development of this thesis. The most important information brought into the context of Corporate Identity, at this stage, was a well established tool applicable to complex design projects, which was considered to be useful towards a more effective and holistic Corporate Identity control. The Field work This systematic approach and treatment of the published material contributed to an holistic understanding of the nature, scope, importance, complexity and topicality, of the subject; and lead to a diagnostic understanding of important problems that continually challenge the field. This was achieved through the research design of the thesis, which incorporated the inferences and observations of the Strategic Enquiry and the tried and tested systems design model for the organisation of complex design projects was used as a reference datum to inform the compilation of the questions of a semistructured interview. The Field study explored how Corporate Identity processes were holistically carried out in a Big UK financial institution specifically looking for practice discontinuities and deviations in the procedures. A diagnostic tool appropriate to investigate Corporate Identity operations was created as a result. The interview material was also subjected to content analysis to explore whether the thesis’ inferences and deductions could d also be grounded in practice. The thesis was then evaluated by relating the thesis material, to the thesis objectives, highlighting the outcomes and limitations employing SWOT analysis. As an epilogue to this thesis, within resources available this study appears to have contributed a substantial insight to the Form and operations of Corporate Identity. It also identified the opportunity for more valuable research, to be carried out.

In this knowledge economy, organizations are leveraging their competence through the knowledge they possess. Managing knowledge will potentially retain the competence held by the organization if knowledge generated across its projects and units is captured, structured and reused. Even though many tools and techniques are proposed in the literature to support these activities, their adoption in industry has been meagre. This may be due to development of tools without basing them on substantial and careful descriptive studies. This raises the following research issues: the knowledge processes and knowledge sources available in organizations and their characteristics need to be understood better. To address these gaps, following objectives are addressed in this research: ♦ To understand the specific needs and capability of the organization for capture and reuse of product development knowledge and ♦ To evaluate various alternative supports for capture and structure of relevant, evolving product development knowledge for reuse. To address these objectives, two observational studies were conducted in the organizations. To get a broader picture about the knowledge processes occurring in the organization, a KRIT model is proposed which is an acronym for Knowledge of solutions-Requirements-Interactions-Tasks, in which interactions of the designers with people and tools play the central role in processing knowledge during design. The KRIT model is validated through the demonstration of the existence of its nodes and links. From the observations it has been found that interactions ‘designer working with computer’, ‘two designers working with a computer’ and ‘two designers interacting with each other’ are most frequently occurred, and occupied most of the time during designing. Any tools to support knowledge capture and reuse should support these interactions such that capture and reuse can be intuitive and in-built in a natural way into a designer’s work habits. It is emphasized that there is a substantial need to increase the percentage of time spent by designers on capturing knowledge during the design process. This increase in time would lead to decrease in a designers’ time spent on knowledge acquisition and dissemination provided designers are capturing reusable knowledge. To answer capture and reuse of knowledge in detail in the observational studies, a new taxonomy of knowledge is proposed. By linking the representations of argumentation, designer’s activities, and the artefact being designed, we argued that the expressiveness of this taxonomy is high compared to the others proposed in the literature. The taxonomy has three broad categories of knowledge: topics, classes, and activities. Based on the definitions of the factors used in the taxonomy and the analysis of the protocols, the factors in each group under each category are argued to be mutually exclusive. In order to study the links between the proposed categories and factors in the taxonomy of knowledge, a method for converting the questions and answers (from the protocol data) into a generic format is framed. The taxonomy is validated comprehensively, and is able to cover various stages of design. Most of the designers’ time was spent working with a CAD package, in which most of the kinds of knowledge mentioned in the proposed taxonomy of knowledge was neither captured not reused. The important observations noted by comparing the knowledge captured in the preliminary study and the main study are as follows: Compared to the preliminary study, process related information and knowledge are captured higher in the main study. In the main study behavioural related content is captured more; whereas in the preliminary study structural content is captured more. The factors organization, usage, maintenance and sales captured in the preliminary study are not at all captured in the main study. In order to assess the usefulness of the knowledge captured, the kinds of knowledge needs of designers were compared with the kinds of knowledge captured. The important observations about the knowledge needs are: Irrespective of the design stages, in almost 50% of the questions, designers interacted with others to know about old issues or proposals in both the studies. A designer’s time for designing would benefit considerably if the answers for these 50% of the old questions were captured and made available for retrieval in formal documents. In both the studies, proposals based questions played a vital role in the questions analyzed. It shows that considerable proportion of time was spent by the designers on validating, by asking questions, the answers known to them. In contrast to the preliminary study, the designers’ needs for process-related information or knowledge were much higher than that for product-related information or knowledge. Comparing the generic questions obtained from the knowledge needs and knowledge captured reveals that only 14% and 26% with product related content and only 10% and 11.3% of the process based content asked by designers during designing were captured in the preliminary and the main study. These results show that there is a mismatch between knowledge captured and knowledge needed by the designers. This may be one of the primary reasons for the poor usage of documents in the organization. The generic questions generated from the questions asked by the designers and various documents will act as a guideline to the designers for what knowledge and information should and should not to be captured. Due to restrictions in the observations, a questionnaire survey was conducted to achieve the objective to collect 10% of total number of employees’ perspectives about the issues considered in this research. The important observations from the analyses of the collected questionnaire are: Designers’ perceive all types of interactions as important and frequent for information generation and sharing. These results are contradictory to the personal observations in which only interactions ‘designer working with computer’ and ‘two designers working with a computer’ occurred frequently. This shows that designers are unable to identify the kinds of interaction which they perform in their daily activities. Due to this, the information processes occurring within these interactions are not perceptible to the designers. Designers perceive that they get the right information at the right time in only 4 or more out of 10 for most of the times. This perception illustrates there is substantial need for the development of support to satisfy the information needs of designers. Analyses of the types of questions reveal that the question asking behavior of the designers is not static; the major share of questions falling under the category ‘question from answer given’ could be interpreted as: designers often do not frame exact questions to fulfil their requirements; they grab the opportunity to take as much as knowledge as possible during an interaction. Analyses of the types of answers reveal that designers gave more inferences on their answers in order to give a better response, which in turn should help reduce the number of questions subsequently asked especially in the protocol coded as ‘new answer’. Two studies have been used to assess the effectiveness of seven tools for supporting knowledge capture and reuse. The important observations from the initial study are: Mobile E-Notes TakerTM is ranked higher because this equipment provides a blend of properties between the paper and computer. These observations stress the importance of features provided for knowledge generation, modification, capture and reuse in the system. The observations from analyzing the three top rated tools (Mobile E-Notes TakerTM, Tablet with viewing facility and Computer with RhinocerosTM CAD package) to understand influence of these tools on knowledge capture and reuse during conceptual designing are: The differences observed in the percentage of capture between the usage of the three tools demonstrate that tools have an influence on the knowledge capture activity. Even though none of the three tools capture adequate knowledge during designing, Mobile e-Notes TakerTM seems to be the best tool for capture compared to the other two tools, both in the original and redesign experiments. These results suggest that some other mechanisms should be added to these tools so that their effectiveness of capturing could be increased. One mechanism is to incorporate the proposed KRIT model and the taxonomy of knowledge during designing. This integration will be one of the good mechanisms to aid knowledge capture and reuse, because the knowledge capture will occur along with the knowledge creation process. We believe that through this integration the purpose to enhance the knowledge capture and reuse during the design process will be achieved.