Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes special study report entitled: Solar applications to landscape design. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in Environmental Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-370). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004 & res_dat=xri:pqdiss & rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation & rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR00376.

Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes special study report entitled : Solar applications to landscape design. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

Over the last few decades, the emergence of various social problems within the urban neighbourhoods of cities, especially in developed countries such as the UK, has called for further research into the relationship between the built environment and the social sustainability of urban developments. Recently, the Scottish government and local authorities have started to revisit and refine their policies and guidelines in order to promote positive social interaction between residents, which is a critical factor in creating a sense of community, and preventing social problems, such as segregation, crime, and apathy. However, in the absence of any detailed information or any practical framework for designers, these policies and guidelines have ended up drawing pictures of an ideal world without helping the designers with the socially responsive solutions. Using multiple case studies, this research aims to establish if and how the design of urban residential developments can facilitate social interaction between residents in Scotland. To achieve this aim, primary data have been collected from seven urban residential developments in Scotland. Self-completion questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and a site survey, have been used to collect data in three areas: social interaction patterns, use of communal spaces and design qualities of the communal spaces within selected developments. Content analysis and GIS analytical maps have been used to analyse the data. The findings show that the access routes and service spaces of urban residential developments, such as entrances, lifts and corridors accommodate most of the interactions between residents. This calls for more attention to the design of these unintentional communal spaces as actual places of contact among neighbours. A number of physical attributes, mostly concerned with the affordance, privacy, physical proximity and visual attractiveness of communal spaces have been found to affect social interaction and the use of space patterns within selected case studies. This research contributes to the much-needed empirical evidence to inform the design of future sustainable housing developments in Scotland by creating a detailed list of design recommendations based on empirical evidence along with modifications of existing assumptions about the quality and quantity of social interaction among residents and the role of communal spaces in facilitating these interactions. It also contributes to our knowledge by introducing new methods of empirical research in the built environment, specifically for research on building scale by expanding the use of analytical GIS maps and the refinement of existing indicators and measures.

Dans le contexte de développement durable et de transition énergétique, le secteur du bâtiment représente en France une véritable mine pour mettre en œuvre les ambitions de maîtrise de la demande en énergie. Réglementations nationales et locales ont été progressivement et substantiellement modifiées, et le processus de conception des bâtiments a dû évoluer pour les respecter. La conception a ainsi été questionnée par d'ambitieuses prescriptions visant la performance énergétique.Nous nous interrogeons sur les réajustements opérés par les concepteurs de bâtiments suite à cette série de prescriptions. Nous montrons que les prescriptions énergétiques des collectivités locales passent en majeure partie par des outils relevant de l'urbanisme opérationnel. De plus, après une période d'apprentissage en raison d'une nouvelle définition de la performance énergétique, le secteur de la conception se caractérise par une certaine stabilité, caractérisée par le retour de routines, la recherche de conventions partagées entre la maîtrise d'ouvrage et la maîtrise d’œuvre et le maintien d'un désintérêt tacite pour la prise en compte des usages. Nous étudions alors comme une innovation (la performance énergétique globale) s'est développée pour être ensuite intégrée au régime de la construction.Nous mobilisons la sociologie pragmatique, et plus particulièrement le courant des économies de la grandeur développé par L. Boltanski et L. Thévenot, ainsi que les travaux du courant conventionnaliste pour analyser trois opérations immobilières en logement collectif, de taille variée mais caractérisées par la recherche de la performance énergétique : la Tour Elithis Danube (Strasbourg, 67), l'éco-quartier des Passerelles (Cran-Gevrier, 74) et Les Jardins de Mûres (Mûres, 74). / In a context of sustainable development and energy transition, the French building sector represents a lever to carry out and achieve energy demand management ambitions. National and local rules regarding construction were progressively and substantially modified, and the building design process had to evolve to abide by these rules. Building design has been called into question by requirements aimed at energy performance.We question the readjustments implemented by building designers to follow these requirements. We show that local authorities mostly use operational urban planning to carry their energy requirements. Besides, after a learning period due to the implementation of a new definition of energy performance, the building sector has known stabilisation, characterized by the return of routines and the seek for shared conventions between the project owner and the project manager team. We study how an innovation (the global energy performance) developped and has been adopted by the socio-technical regime of construction.We mobilize the pragmatic sociology; particularly the French branch of sociological economy developed by L. Boltanski and L. Thévenot, and also researches on conventionalism, in order to study three estate operations. These operations belong to multi-unit housing, are of various sizes and are all characterized by a search of energy performance. They are located in different places: in the city of Strasbourg (Alsace) and in the area of Haute-Savoie.

Ease of use differentiates products in a highly competitive market place. It also brings an added value that culminates in a higher degree of customer satisfaction, repeated business, increased sales, and higher revenue. User-centered design is a strategic asset that companies can use to improve their customer relationships by learning more about their customers, and increase their sales. In today's economy, the measurement of intangible assets such as user experience has become a major need for industries because of the relationship between user-centered design and organizational benefits such as customer loyalty. As companies realize that the inclusion of user-centered design concepts in product or system design are a key component of attracting and maintaining customers, as well as increasing revenue, the need for quantitative methods to describe these benefits has become more urgent. The goal of this research is to develop a methodology to characterize user-centered design features, customer benefits and organizational benefits resulting from developing products using user-centered design principles through the use of an integrated framework of critical factors. Therefore, this research focuses on the identification of the most significant variables required to assess and measure the degree of user-centered design (UCD) characteristics included in the various aspects of product development such as physical design features, cognitive design attributes, industrial design aspects and user experience design considerations. Also this research focuses on the development of assessment tools for developers to use when evaluating the incorporation of user-centered design features in the creation of products and systems. In addition, a mathematical model to quantify the inclusion of UCD factors considered in the design of a product and systems is presented in this research. The results obtained using the assessment tools and the mathematical model can be employed to assess the customer benefits and organizational benefits resulting from including user-centered design features in the creation of products and systems. Overall, organizational benefits such as customer loyalty, company image, and profitability are expected to be impacted by the company's capability to meet or exceed stated design claims and performance consistency while maintaining aesthetic appeal, long product life, and product usefulness. The successful completion of this research has produced many beneficial research findings. For example, it has helped characterize and develop descriptors for estimating critical quantitative and qualitative components, sub-components, and factors influencing user-centered design that are related to customer and organizational benefits through the use of fuzzy set modeling. In addition, the development of specific tools, methods, and techniques for evaluating and quantifying UCD components resulted from this study.

Driven by the highly cyclical nature of their increasingly commoditised product offerings, many capital goods manufacturers are seeing the benefits of delivering services integrated with their core product offerings. Whilst existing research is almost unanimous in advocating the value of a servitization strategy, understanding how these product-service systems (PSSs) can be developed and delivered remains a significant challenge. The closely related PSS field, which has its heritage in the environmental and social science disciplines, is more mature in this area and a number of models have been proposed. The research reported within this thesis contributes to knowledge by investigating whether the approaches to PSS development, reported within the PSS literature, reflects the PSS development practice of servitized manufacturers. More specifically, soft systems methodology was used to explore the delivery of PSSs within the UK railway industry in order to gain an understanding of the implications for developing new PSSs. With this understanding, the existing approaches to PSS development were evaluated with respect to one servitized manufacturer through an in-depth single case study. The findings highlighted a number of significant differences between the practice of the servitized manufacturer and the literature. A survey was used to investigate whether the differences were generalisable to a larger sample of servitized manufacturers. The findings point towards the simplification of the reported phases within PSS development and the inclusion of a number of previously unreported processes and activities. Based on these results a new model of PSS development is proposed to better reflect the practice of servitized manufacturers. The model, consisting of four phases and seventeen processes, was operationalised in the form of a workbook and tested through application. Applying the workbook resulted in the successful creation of a number of new PSS concepts.

Assistive technologies (AT) are the products provided to elderly and disabled people to enable them to live more independently. Despite their ability to help maintain independence and prevent injury, the literature discussed within this thesis indicates that assistive technologies are not meeting the needs of the end-user. In response, research has been undertaken with the following objectives: 1. To identify how and why assistive technology products are failing to satisfy the customer. 2. To establish if a design tool can be created that overcomes the issues identified in the inductive research and which enables companies to design customer-satisfying assistive technology products. In progressing these objectives, two phases of research were planned. The first comprised four parallel studies (focus groups, case studies, questionnaires and a literature study), which together examined the state of AT products and the product-development activities of AT manufacturers. The second phase of research examined four customer-focused product design methods for their suitability for utilisation by small companies within the AT sector. On finding that no method in its entirety was suitable, a customer-focused design tool for small AT companies was developed. The resulting tool comprises eight elements for application in the initial stages of the product development process. The tool was tested in four separate studies, which examined its usability and acceptability to AT companies and which gave further insights into the AT sector. The research both finds that AT products are failing the customer in five areas and that manufacturers are contributing to this failure through a lack of customer-focus in their design processes. In addition to identifying the market research and product development activities of small AT companies, a key contribution to knowledge resulting from the research is the concept of sectoral readiness for methods of design. In its conclusion the thesis finds that the two research objectives have been met.

No description available.

Computer games are considered as powerful tools to learning and they have a potential for educational use. However, the lack of available comprehensive design paradigms and well-designed research studies about the question of &ldquo / how to&rdquo / incorporate games into learning environments is still a question, despite more than 30 years&rsquo / existence of computer games and simulations in the instructional design movement. Setting off from these issues, a formative research study is designed to propose an instructional design/development model, which may be used for creation of game-like learning environments. Eighteen undergraduate students from Computer Education and Instructional Technology Department in METU participated to the study. Data collection lasted for three months and data were collected through interviews, observations and the artifacts that the participants produced. After the data analysis, it was found that the phases of the instructional design/development process should not be separate, strictly bounded, and processing a linear manner. Depending on these results and with the inspiration from fuzzy logic, an instructional design/development model for creating game-like environments, which is called as &ldquo / FID&lt / sup&gt / 2&lt / /sup&gt / GE model&rdquo / is proposed.