This thesis aims to discover possibilities of using products that mechanically transform to support environmentally significant behaviour (ESB), a term that refers to intentional behaviour of an individual to change the natural world. The first half of the work explored the potential relationship between mechanical transformation principles and certain ESBs. This exploration found that implementing transformative mechanisms in products enabled spontaneous use of the products in unanticipated situations. For example, a collapsible reusable shopping bag helped users avoid purchasing disposable bags when they went to grocery stores impulsively. The second half studied a variety of organisms to identify transformation patterns in nature. These patterns were summarized in a two-dimensional matrix to facilitate conceptual design of transformable products. In summary, this work showed that mechanical transformation facilitates at least three types of ESB, and also developed a new tool to assist designers in developing conceptual transformable products that can support ESBs.

This thesis aims to discover possibilities of using products that mechanically transform to support environmentally significant behaviour (ESB), a term that refers to intentional behaviour of an individual to change the natural world. The first half of the work explored the potential relationship between mechanical transformation principles and certain ESBs. This exploration found that implementing transformative mechanisms in products enabled spontaneous use of the products in unanticipated situations. For example, a collapsible reusable shopping bag helped users avoid purchasing disposable bags when they went to grocery stores impulsively. The second half studied a variety of organisms to identify transformation patterns in nature. These patterns were summarized in a two-dimensional matrix to facilitate conceptual design of transformable products. In summary, this work showed that mechanical transformation facilitates at least three types of ESB, and also developed a new tool to assist designers in developing conceptual transformable products that can support ESBs.

This research investigates the role of product design on technology switching in the context of a capital-intensive product. I focus on switching rather than on new sales because switching is the primary means of changing market share in nearly mature markets. Further, the dominant logic ??? is that, because of switching costs and the related consequences, incumbents have a strong advantage when upgrading or replacing equipment. However, the literature on lead users suggests that those users at the cutting-edge are willing to meet the costs of changing technology because they have the capabilities needed to leverage significant advantages from the new technology. The extant literature on switching focuses primarily on consumers in highly competitive markets. There is little understanding of the antecedents of switching in business markets, especially in markets for capital-intensive technology-based products. This research investigates the influence of product design on switching behavior for capital-intensive high technology products, where buyers are faced with numerous implications and significant costs at each step of the process. The switching behavior for capital-intensive products has not been studied previously; because of this deficiency, we do not know the consequences for theory, that is, how different theoretical assumptions will contribute to the final decision to switch, or for managerial practice, that is, the kind of strategies managers should follow to retain existing buyers under such conditions. Previous literature did not explore explicitly the concept of product design as an influence on switching, because satisfaction and switching cost were widely used as determinants of switching decisions in competitive markets. This gap in knowledge is due to the difficulty in identifying a method that would allow one to differentiate among the products??? performance and how the difference would impact consumers??? objectives. It is also difficult for researchers to define the characteristics of high technology products that make certain products more attractive on the market than others, without substantial assistance from experts in particular products. These conditions create a barrier to investigating switching behavior for high technology products. This research is positioned in the overlapping area between product design and switching behavior. The linkage between these two bodies of literature has never been explored. The research answers two important questions: (1) what are the antecedents of technology switching in a context where there are considerable costs?, and (2) does product design encourage technology switching behavior? Dynamic capabilities theory is used to explain this research, because the decision to switch an old technology for a new one in rapidly changing technology markets is about renewing resources and capabilities to maintain competitive advantages. This research is conducted in the context of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) industry as a case study. Considerable switching has occurred in this industry over the last decade, resulting in this industry offering a good opportunity to investigate the reasons why. The market is divided into different segments based on the region and the health care system. I selected the university hospitals segment, MRI research centers, to conduct this research study, because it is feasible to track the technology switching process for this segment over time and because this segment???s market is nearly mature. Data were collected from multiple sources including personal interviews, online surveys, annual conference database, product technical reports, and patent data. In this study, the independent variable is product design and other variables related to switching costs and marketing strategies. The dependent variable is switching behavior, which has two values: (1) ???switched,??? defined as purchasing a new technology from a different supplier, and (2) ???not switched,??? defined as repurchasing from the same supplier. After collecting surveys from decision makers who purchased MRI technology, I use logistic regression analysis to test the hypothesis that the product design has a direct impact on the switching decision of capital-intensive products. Research findings have shown that buyers are willing to switch to a different technology in spite of high associated costs, particularly when they are faced with a product that restricts their capabilities. Product design represents the most influential factor underpinning switching, because it provides more capabilities that motivate switching. Notwithstanding the fact that moving to a new supplier imposes significant challenges, including technology and relationship incompatibility, findings confirm that this distinction in product capabilities has induced some MRI buyers to move to a new supplier in order to maintain a competitive market position. The findings also confirm that support during the transition process can be achieved through marketing strategies. The findings of this research clarify our understanding of the switching behavior of capital-intensive products where successful product design is expected to play a significant role. This behavior is expected to be different from the behavior identified in previous research, because the previous research was conducted using mainly competitive markets with frequently purchased products. For lead users faced with products that restrict their capabilities, switching is an expected option despite high switching costs. Those early switchers, having capitalized on the real value of the new product, serve to encourage other users to pursue the same behavior later. The outcomes from this MRI study ??? as one example of a high technology device ??? could be applied to the different industries that share the same characteristics in terms of high rates of technological change and high switching costs, for example, military devices, aircrafts, and advanced medical and industrial devices.

I here have been very few studies carried out on enhancing CFC (Cross-functional Collaboration) for the product design development. nevertheless there is a clear consensus among researchers that this issue is a critical one in ne product design development. Besides, almost all of the research work, which attempted to encourage CFC in NPD situations, was carried out focused on the cross-functional team which is the most effective organisation type to encourage collaboration between other functional groups, rather than the functional organisation, which is difficult organisation to facilitate collaboration between other functional groups. On the other hand, there is still no clear evidence which proves that CFC improves the performance of' design development. Nevertheless, this proof is essential premise to support the value of producing the information to improve CFC for product design development. This research attempts to fill in this gap in the deficiency of research. This longitudinal research has been conducted with complementary research methods: a qualitative research and a quantitative research in the field. As the main body of this research, 15 key -decision makers for new product design development were interviewed and 243 questionnaires from eight leading consumer electronics companies in three countries (Korea, Japan. UK) were analysed. In conclusion, firstly, this research has proved there is a plus correlation between the level of CFC and several dimensions of the design development performance of consumer electronics products. Furthermore, a new framework model is developed and proposed after compressing and combining all vital findings of this research work. This developed model presents three major findings of this research. Firstly, the factors affecting CF C for design development of consumer electronics products, secondly, the priority of importance of these factors, and finally, factors directly contributing to design development performance in several dimensions. Overall, the findings of this research help to people what are valuable factors for building CFC climate and what are prior factor in a quandary concerning, where to concentrate their efforts so as to successfully implement their (TV to improve their design development performance. In particular, the findings of this research could further help designers and design managers who lack the experience and knowledge of collaboration situations in the rigid functional organisational boundaries, which many consumer electronics companies face.

Recent advances in social media have profound technical and economic implications for innovative design. This research is motivated to investigate social network effects on product design with a focus on the interface of engineering design, viral marketing, and social computing. This dissertation envisions a new paradigm of design, called viral product design for social network effects. The research problem is formulated as identification of both an optimal set of product configurations and an optimal set of seed customers so as to maximize product adoption via online social networks through equilibrium solutions to marketing-engineering coordination. Fundamental issues are investigated and a technical framework is proposed with integrated decision-based design methods. Results of case studies demonstrate that the proposed research is able to bridge the gaps between the domains of engineering design and viral marketing by incorporating social network effects. The proposed work is geared towards new design theory and decision models by integrating peer influence of social networks, which shed light on understanding the social aspect of design. The dissertation reveals the fundamental issues underlying viral product design, including the identification of viral attributes, customer preference modeling incorporating subjective experiences, the dynamics of the diffusion mechanism of online social networks, formulation of adoption maximization, and coordination between the marketing and engineering domains. In order to tackle the fundamental issues, a technical framework of viral product design for social network effects is proposed. Accordingly, mathematical and computational models are developed within the framework to support 1) latent customer needs elicitation for viral product attributes extraction, 2) customer preference modeling and quantification for product choice decision making, 3) social network modeling for product adoption prediction, and 4) viral product design evaluation by adoption maximization. These coherent models along the technical framework lay the theoretical foundation of this research, as described below. First, in order to extract potential viral product attributes, latent customer needs elicitation is emphasized. This is because latent customer needs can delight customers unexpectedly, and thus lead to potential product adoption to a large extent. We propose to elicit latent customer needs by use case analogical reasoning from sentiment analysis of online product reviews. A case study of Kindle Fire HD tablets shows the potential and feasibility of the proposed method. The extracted product attributes and attribute levels provide the choice set of viral product attributes. Second, based on the extracted product attributes, a customer preference model based on cumulative prospect theory is presented, accommodating subjective experiences in the product choice decision making process. Moreover, a hierarchical Bayesian model with Markov chain Monte Carlo is used to estimate parameters involved in the model. Based on the case study of aircraft cabin interior design, the model parameters under different experimental conditions show systematic influence of subjective experiences in choice decision making. Furthermore, a copula structure is used to construct a holistic product utility, showing customers' overall preferences to a product. This measure is crucial to product choice decision making in the context of social networks. Third, in order to predict product adoption incorporating peer influence of social networks, a linear threshold-hurdle model is proposed. It overcomes multiple drawbacks of traditional diffusion models by modeling activation thresholds, influence probability, adoption spread, holistic utility of the product, and hurdle utility of a customer in a holistic fashion. A case study of Kindle Fire HD tablets demonstrates both the predictive power of the proposed model and interesting results about customers' adoption behavior. This model paves the way for product adoption maximization in large social networks. Fourth, in order to coordinate between marketing-engineering concerns, I formulate a bi-level game theoretic optimization model for viral product design evaluation, in which the leader maximizes product adoption, while the follower optimizes product line performance. Through social network effects in terms of viral product attributes and viral influence attributes, the expected number of product adopters and the expected shared surplus, resulting from the identified product configurations and seed customers, are proved to be larger than those obtained from existing practice of viral marketing and product line design respectively, based on the case study of Kindle Fire HD tablets. Thus, the proposed paradigm of design extends the traditional boundaries among domains of engineering design, viral marketing, and social computing.

Consideration of products' ergonomic qualities is one important component for successful product development. Product designers engaged in the core activity of product development need methods that support the consideration of ergonomics along with other product requirements. This thesis aims to address these needs. The first part of the thesis investigates how people working within product development organisations communicate with and about users of their products. The general need for methods to support communication of user aspects in product development is identified through formal interviews with product developers and a review of the management, ergonomics and design literature. The second part of the thesis studies the factors which affect the integration of ergonomics in product design. Supportive methods, including User Characters, for evoking user consideration among designers together with Overlapping methods for scheduling ergonomics evaluation in product design processes are introduced and argued. The third part of the thesis reviews and discusses computer aided ergonomics as a means for integration of ergonomics in product design. A web-based support system for effective employment of human simulation tools is developed using a participative approach and evaluated based on the system's usability. The objective of the fourth part of the thesis is to study how human simulation tools can aid designers' consideration of human diversity to accommodate users of diverse anthropometric characteristics in multivariate design problems such as automobile cockpits. The work involves the evaluation of different approaches for the generation of specific manikin families which can be used as test groups for fitting trials in the virtual design process. The research demonstrates enhancements in design methodology knowledge to support integration of ergonomics in product design processes with a focus on anthropometric diversity in vehicle design.

This study mainly investigates the roles of product design and advertising in conferring identity related meanings upon products and associating them with certain consumer identities. For this purpose, firstly, the concept of identity and increasing centrality of objects in its construction and expression are explored. Secondly, the nature and dynamics of the relationship between people and objects are discussed with a specific emphasis on the identity related aspects of this relationship. Then, a more detailed discussion is held on the roles played by product design and advertising in the process of identity construction through designed products. Finally, a case study on a selected product group is presented in order to illustrate the theoretical discussions in previous chapters.

Engineering complex systems and New Product Development (NPD) are major challenges for contemporary engineering design and must be studied at three levels of: Products, Processes and Organizations (PPO). The science of complexity indicates that complex systems share a common characteristic: they are robust yet fragile. Complex and large scale systems are robust in the face of many uncertainties and variations; however, they can collapse, when facing certain conditions. This is so since complex systems embody many subtle, intricate and nonlinear interactions. If formal modelling exercises with available computational approaches are not able to assist designers to arrive at accurate predictions, then how can we immunize our large scale and complex systems against sudden catastrophic collapse? This thesis is an investigation into complex product design. We tackle the issue first by introducing a template and/or design methodology for complex product design. This template is an integrated product design scheme which embodies and combines elements of both design theory and organization theory; in particular distributed (spatial and temporal) problem solving and adaptive team formation are brought together. This design methodology harnesses emergence and innovation through the incorporation of massive amount of numerical simulations which determines the problem structure as well as the solution space characteristics. Within the context of this design methodology three design methods based on measures of complexity are presented. Complexity measures generally reflect holistic structural characteristics of systems. At the levels of PPO, correspondingly, the Immunity Index (global modal robustness) as an objective function for solutions, the real complexity of decompositions, and the cognitive complexity of a design system are introduced These three measures are helpful in immunizing the complex PPO from chaos and catastrophic failure. In the end, a conceptual decision support system (DSS) for complex NPD based on the presented design template and the complexity measures is introduced. This support system (IMMUNE) is represented by a Multi Agent Blackboard System, and has the dual characteristic of the distributed problem solving environments and yet reflecting the centralized viewpoint to process monitoring. In other words IMMUNE advocates autonomous problem solving (design) agents that is the necessary attribute of innovative design organizations and/or innovation networks; and at the same time it promotes coherence in the design system that is usually seen in centralized systems.

<p>This is a dissertation for a Bachelor Degree Project at the University of Skövde. The project is carried out in cooperation with the company Kinnarps AB.</p><p>The objective of this project was to develop a new chair for café and lunch rooms, which should satisfy the markets expectations and demands and match Kinnarps AB’s assortment today. The project has contained everything from identification of user and customer needs and requirements to evaluation and building of a prototype.</p><p>The result is a chair with a frame of tubular steel and there is nothing like it in Kinnarps AB’s assortment today. The chair has a frame of tubular steel and separate seat and backrest, just like the chairs Jig and Tango as it is intended to replace. The chair’s extraordinary characteristics are that the shape of the backrest enables a good grip and the motion which encourages variation in sitting postures. The motion is new for this kind of chair both in Kinnarps AB’s assortment as well as on the market.</p><p>The product development process is an iterative process which can be described with the activities: identification of customer requirements, product design specification, initiation of concept solutions, evaluation, embodiment design and detail design. Knowledge about the customer requirements and needs is fundamental to a successful product. The result of the market research showed that the new chair should be a comfortable and inviting chair which is lightweight and simple with a timeless design and organic shape. It also came to our knowledge that it is very important that the chair is stackable, possible to hang on a table and linkable.</p><p>Different researchers’ literatures have been studied and an analysis has been made in SAMMIE to ensure that the chair has good ergonomics. This is a very important quality but often an unspoken requirement that is taken for granted.</p><p>The result was carefully evaluated during and after the building of the prototype. Kinnarps AB will also make further analysis and quality tests.</p><p>This project has hopefully resulted in a chair with good quality and a potential to participate in the competition on the market.</p> / <p>Den här rapporten behandlar ett examensarbete i integrerad produktutveckling. Examensarbetet har gjorts i samarbete med företaget Kinnarps AB.</p><p>Uppdraget bestod i att utveckla en ny stol till café och lunchrum som ska möta marknadens förväntningar och krav samt passa in i Kinnarps AB:s sortiment. Under projektet har det förutom rena konstruktions- och designförslag gjorts alltifrån marknadsanalys för att få reda på marknadens och kundernas krav, kartläggning av och anpassning till produktion och validering med bl a framtagning av prototyp.</p><p>Resultatet av arbetet är en stålrörsstol, vars like inte finns i Kinnarps AB:s sortiment idag. Stolen har ett underrede i bockat stålrör samt separat sits och rygg, precis som de befintliga stolarna, Jig och Tango, som den är tänkt att ersätta. Det som är speciellt med stolen och som urskiljer den från konkurrenternas stolar är den mycket greppvänliga ryggen och den sviktande rörelsen i ryggen. Den införda svikten är något nytt för den här typen av stolar och finns idag varken i Kinnarps AB:s sortiment eller ute på marknaden.</p><p>Produktutvecklingsprocessen är en iterativ process som kan beskrivas med aktiviteterna: fastställande av kundkrav, kravspecifikation, konceptgenerering, utvärdering, förkroppsligande samt detaljdesign. Att veta vad marknaden vill ha eller behöver är en avgörande faktor för en lyckad produkt. Marknadsanalysen visade att den nya stolen bör vara en bekväm och inbjudande stol som är lätt och enkel med en tidlös design och organiska former. Att stolen ska vara möjlig att stapla, hänga upp och koppla ihop med andra stolar visade sig vara viktigt.</p><p>Att stolen har bra ergonomi är viktigt, varför olika forskares verk studerats. För att ytterligare undersöka de ergonomiska aspekterna har en analys gjorts i programmet SAMMIE.</p><p>För att göra en ordentlig uppföljning och utvärdering av resultatet togs det fram en prototyp. Det kommer även att göras en riskanalys och kvalitetstest i Kinnarps AB:s ackrediterade laboratorium.</p><p>Förhoppningsvis har arbetet resulterat i en stol med hög kvalitet och som har god potential att synas i konkurrensen på marknaden.</p>

<p>Denna rapport behandlar ett examensarbete inom integrerad produktutveckling som utfördes av Andreas Carlsson och Marcus Ronnheim vid Designingenjörsprogrammet på Högskolan i Skövde vårterminen 2008. Examensarbetet var att utveckla Casall Sports Products viktskivor, viktlås samt viktställ för bodypumpviktskivor. Bakgrunden till uppdraget var att Casall tyckte att deras, redan nämnda produkter, var föråldrade och behövde ett nytt utseende samt att viktstället saknade vissa fördelaktiga funktioner. Rapporten beskriver hela produktutvecklingsfasen från förstudie till produktionsritningar.</p><p>Under förstudien gjordes bl.a. en marknadsundersökning och användarintervjuer, detta resulterade i en kravspecifikation. Idégenereringsfasen resulterade i flera s.k. mood boards som ett flertal idéer kring viktskivor och viktställ togs fram utifrån. Konceptutvecklingen handlade mycket om att bestämma en exakt storlek för produkterna och att bestämma material samt att göra CAD-modeller och ritningar.</p><p>Resultatet blev att internationella viktskivor, pumpviktskivor samt viktställ gjordes helt färdiga. Skolvikter och viktlås stannade vid koncept, dock togs ändå ritningar togs fram för viktlåset.</p>