Interest is a psychological construct characterized by an explorative tendency towards a stimulus. Product appearance, on the other hand, is an important aspect determining the first impression about products and highly influential on users&rsquo / psychological and behavioral responses, accordingly. In this study, interest evoked by product appearance is explored with an emphasis on visual qualities of products associated with interestingness. This thesis involves arguments from literature and an empirical study.

Recently developed co-design methods ask for users&rsquo / creative outcomes all through the design process. Designers are familiar with the creative process but users are not. The heuristic tasks given to users should reveal their creativity and harness it for high-quality outcomes. Contextmapping is a new co-design method following the same need as others / the method involves generative sessions in which users are asked to create artifacts communicating their needs and dreams about future products. Children are taking part in these processes and their involvement requires an understanding about their needs and abilities. Contextmapping with children has many aspects yet to be discovered, one of which is harnessing children&rsquo / s creativity during generative sessions. This forms the basis for this research. The thesis traces an overview of creativity, co-design with children, contextmapping with children and children&rsquo / s creativity. The literature review opens a new area for investigation about using competition, which is seen both detrimental and challenging for eliciting creativity from children, as a motivation during contextmapping activities. The empirical study is formed from six sessions aiming to find an answer to the effects of cooperation and competition on children&rsquo / s creativity during contextmapping sessions in regard to gender differences. The analyzed and discussed findings show that competition is a motivating element and has positive impacts on children&rsquo / s creativity, it increases children&rsquo / s motivation towards contextmapping tasks and the outcomes of the sessions are more appropriate to the expectations of the task.

Problems that the earth has faced with such as the depletion of natural resources, contamination of water, air and land, extension of species, and the global warming have brought up the sustainable development to the agenda. This state of affairs has elicited the undeniable role of industrial design activity on the sustainable development / sustainability has become an important concern of industrial design education. The purpose of this study is to determine the state of sustainable design education in the undergraduate industrial design programs in Turkey &ndash / especially in the Department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University (METU) &ndash / by exploring the relation between industrial design education and the concept of sustainability with regard to the examples from all around the world. With reference to the arguments collected by the literature review study and findings of the field study about the opinions of industrial design students and educators, suggestions will be made on how sustainability can be integrated in the curricula of the undergraduate industrial design programs in Turkey.

Aim of the study was to discuss and identify individual differences that influence the user performance during usability tests of consumer products that are known to prevent researchers to conduct systematic studies. The rationale behind the study was developing a tool for sampling in order to handle experiential factors as a variable rather than a source of error. The study made it possible to define and elaborate on constructs general interaction expertise (GIE) and general interaction self efficacy (GISE), and to devise a measurement scheme based on performance observation and attitude measurement. Both perspectives were evaluated with preliminary validity studies and it was possible to provide evidence on predictive validity of the tool developed. Furthermore, opportunities of utilizing the results in design and qualitative research settings were also explored.

New product development is a challenging process which plays a significant role for the rise of the competitiveness of a firm. This process benefits from cooperative relations in the supply network of the firm, such as the collaboration in buyer- supplier relations. The automotive industry presents a good example for studying buyer supplier relations. The positive effects of supplier involvement in product design and development process have been discussed intensely in the literature due to the exceptional success of OEMs &ndash / Original Equipment Manufacturers- in the Japanese automotive industry. This study analyzes the role of suppliers in the automotive sector, the buyer-supplier interface and relations, and new product development process specific to the automotive industry in order to highlight the outcomes of supplier involvement in product development process especially during the design phase. A descriptive questionnaire study on the Turkish automotive supplier industry was conducted. The questionnaire was completed by 25 supplier firms who are members of the Association of Turkish Automotive Parts &amp / Components Manufacturers (TAYSAD) and 5 OEM firms. The questionnaire results show that the level of supplier involvement in the product design phase is low compared to the other project phases such as introduction to the project, prototype production, pre-launch, and mass production. Following this preliminary study, two in-depth interviews were conducted with one OEM and one supplier representatives, and more detailed information on suppliers&rsquo / involvement in product design was gathered. Keywords: Supplier Involvement, Automotive Industry, Product Development, Collaborative Design

The main focus of the multidisciplinary nature of design is to provide users a better life in terms of enabling the products to be safe, usable and pleasurable to use. Therefore, physical pain is always avoided. However, physical pain is involved in our daily lives, not only as an avoided concept, but also as a constructive concept. It is used for functional or hedonic purposes / whether consciously or not. The focus in this research is exploring these &lsquo / used&rsquo / pains, and their relations to product design / in other words, how products are (or how they may be) used or manipulated to use pain instead of avoiding it. Eventually, the aim is to map the pain experience as a constructive element of experience and to come up with a statement for the usage of physical pain in product design as a beneficial tool, instead of just being a tool for pleasure as it has been used in product design till now. In order to explore the pain experience with products, a contexmapping study and a focus group study have been done. The phenomena of &lsquo / good, transitional and bad pain&rsquo / were introduced. Following this, pain experience with products model was proposed utilizing the results of the studies and for the exploration of the implementation of the model in practicum, a generative session study to obtain initial design ideas was done.

The relationship between Symbolism and Surrealism is well known yet scarcely documented in detail. This thesis aims to address this oversight by exploring the connections between these two movements, specifically through investigating their shared motif of the androgyne. The androgyne embodies the professed aim of each of these groups: the transcendence of the physical in favour of the ephemeral for the Symbolists, and the unification of opposites for the Surrealists. Equally, both movements have an interest in the occult, and the androgyne is a key image within the occult tradition symbolising spiritual unity, dovetailing with the Symbolists’ and the Surrealists’ goals. The androgyne will be analysed firstly within the context of alchemy, surveying the way in which it is portrayed in primary sources, and how this has changed in Symbolist and Surrealist art. It will also be analysed in the contexts of psychoanalysis and gender identity, observing how male and female artists portray the androgyne differently and why. The aim of this thesis is therefore two-fold: firstly, a comparative study of the iconography employed by these connected movements, to original alchemical sources, and also between the male and female artists of these movements. Secondly, it aims to create a more secure basis for the notion of alchemical influence on Symbolism and Surrealism.

In this dissertation, the various strategies of humour translation have been analysed by taking various cartoons with speech bubbles from the popular Turkish humour weekly magazine Leman and other similar publications. Generally considered as an extremely problematic, sometimes next to impossible, task within the translation studies, humour translation requires and deserves special attention since, as it was explained in the related sections, it may unite or separate people within the context of one single joke. As we also have stated elsewhere in the text, the description of both humour and translation, as two separate concepts, are not available in certain and decisive terms. This is especially true for the concept of humour which also covers the areas of laughter, jokes, wit, satire, irony and many others which are all interchangeable with each other. This fact makes an all-round definition very difficult. We also tried to show that, the visual humour or the visual aspect of humour could be a valuable asset for a foreign recipient who genuinely wishing to understand humour products from a different and remote culture. We wanted to show, and to some extent share, that the cartoons, provided they are not strictly political or crammed with regional issues and accents, could be fathomed by an outsider with the help of a decent translation and an adequate amount of contextual and cultural background information. We have assumed, from the very beginning of this project, that the contemporary Turkish humour, particularly cartoons that are represented in Leman and other similar publications, was interesting enough to become a dissertation subject, particularly those with stock types or characters since they have the potential of becoming snapshots of a country which is still considered as alien (or other) by the West. As far as this writer concerned, the main points of interest concerning Turkey by the British public could roughly be summarised in two points: a bargain trip to the seaside during the summer season and some occasional football matches Manchester United plays against Turkish teams in Istanbul. Especially the latter always attracts heavy press coverage during and after a match. We wanted to show that there are other cultural aspects exist in Turkey as well and such aspects could be transferred to other cultures by ways of translation. The material we have chosen is both visual and prose at the same time and although they function as a unity, they also complement each other. It is proposed that, although a perfect translation is always a desirable concept in almost every field, the translation of humour is possible within certain frameworks. The visual side of cartoons, as in situation comedies, contributes immensely to the comprehension of the message, which should be considered as the most important feature of the joke. To this end, a variety of cartoons are selected from both Lenicyn and other similar humour weeklies and translated with an adequate amount of background and contextual information that provided beforehand. This background information also includes, as far as the material in question permits, a close analysis of the language and the subject matter. To provide a better insight for the reader, a summary of Turkish humour and humour magazines are added alongside a section on the issue of humour itself.

Macro-scale planning and design as a product of modernism have been abandoned to a high degree, as a result of the reactionary post-modern approaches since the 1960&amp / #65533 / s. Intensifying with the rise of neo-liberal approaches in the 1970&amp / #65533 / s, these reactions advocated merely incremental decision-making and design in the making of cities. These developments lived in the western countries showed their reflections in Turkey with the 1980&amp / #65533 / s, resulting in fragmented planning practices. However it is the hypothesis of the study that macro-scale urban design: thus designing the form and the structural elements of the city is the statement of the development policy of the city. Thus structural elements that make up a certain city form is a major area of concern for urban design. Within this frame firstly the debate between the modern and post-modern approaches about the scope of intervening in the development of the city will be evaluated. Then the Turkish planning approach will be analyzed with regard to its success in development control. Basic city forms and their growth characteristics will be examined in the next part. Finally the planning practices of Ankara and the form and the structural elements proposed will be evaluated accordingly.

This study examines basic design courses in industrial design programs in Turkey, in terms of origins, aims and methods. The aim of the study is to inquire the differences and similarities, and to understand factors affecting the characteristics of basic design courses. A field study was conducted about the subject, which comprised of interviews with instructors of basic design courses and chairpersons in six departments offering undergraduate program in industrial design in Turkey. The field study indicated that the aims of the course in different institutions were similar, whereas the origins, methods and the content varied. Of the factors affecting basic design education, student admission procedure, background of students and the faculty that the industrial design department belonged to were found to be important. The differences among course instructors were also found to be as much significant as the institutional differences.