Objective: The goal of this research was to determine whether alternate-line shading (zebra-striping) of grid-based displays affects the strategy (i.e., “visual flow”) and efficiency of serial search. Background: Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles are relevant to how viewers’ eyes can be guided through such visual works. One common technique for grids, “zebra-striping,” is intended to guide eyes through the design, or “create visual flow” by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. Method: 13 participants completed a visual serial search task. The target was embedded in a grid that had 1) no shading, 2) shading of alternating rows, or 3) shading of alternating columns. Response times and error rates were analyzed to determine search strategy and efficiency. Results: Our analysis found evidence supporting a weak effect of shading on search strategy. The direction of shading had an impact on which parts of the grid were responded to most rapidly. However, a left-to-right reading bias and middle-to-outside edge effect were also found. Overall performance was reliably better when the grid had no shading. Exploratory analyses suggest individual differences may be a factor. Conclusion: Shading seems to create visual flow that is relatively weak compared to search strategies related to the edge effect or left-to-right reading biases. In general, however, the presence of any type of shading reduced search performance. Application: Designers creating a grid-based display should not automatically assume that shading will change viewers search strategies. Furthermore, although strategic shading may be useful for tasks other than that studied here, our current data indicate that shading can actually be detrimental to visual search for complex (i.e., conjunctive) targets.

Analogies play a well-noted role in innovative design. Analogical reasoning is central to the practices of design-by-analogy and bio-inspired design. In both, analogies are used to derive abstracted principles from prior examples to generate new design solutions. While numerous laboratory and classroom studies of analogy usage have been published, relatively few studies have systematically examined real-world design-by-analogy to describe its characteristics and impacts. To better teach design-by-analogy and develop support tools for engineers, specific insights are needed regarding, for example, what types of product advantages are gained through design-by-analogy and how different design process characteristics influence its outcomes. This research comprises two empirical product studies which investigate analogical inspiration in real-world design to inform the development of new analogy methods and tools. The first, an exploratory pilot study of 57 analogy-inspired products, introduces the product study method and applies several categorical variables to classify product examples. These variables measure aspects such as the composition of the design team, the driving approach to analogical reasoning, and the achieved benefits of using the analogy-inspired concept. The full scale study of 70 analogy-inspired products uses formal collection and screening methods and a refined set of classification variables to analyze examples. It adopts a cross-sectional approach, using statistical tests of association to detect relationships among variables. Combined, these surveys of real-world analogy-inspired innovation inform the development of analogy tools and provide a general account of distant analogy usage across engineering disciplines. The cross-sectional product study method demonstrated in this work introduces a valuable tool for investigating factors and impacts of real-world analogy usage in design.

Selecting one color can be done with relative ease, but this task becomes more difficult with each subsequent color. Colormoo is an online tool aimed at solving this problem. We implement three algorithms for generating color palettes based off of a starting color. Data is collected for each palette that is generated. Our analysis reveals two of the algorithms are preferred, but under different circumstances. Furthermore, we find that users prefer palettes containing colors that are compatible, but not too similar. With refined heuristics, we believe these techniques can be extended and applied beyond the field of graphic design alone.

Industrial design is a profession almost entirely dedicated to the design and development of physical goods and material culture. It is a practice that has thrived since industrialization, when the mass production of goods allowed average people the chance to afford products that improved their life style. Industrialization has chosen the path of least resistance and focused on the sheer volume of growth and high net profits without regard to efficiency or conservation on a macro level; especially in regards to energy use including fossil fuels. Companies are likely to choose to focus efficiencies in production and supply chain management on a micro-level within the company itself in order to help improve their bottom line profits. Nature has mastered the philosophy of doing more with less in order to survive, and soon designers will be encouraged to follow suit. With population increasing, energy prices rising and non-renewable resources being consumed at higher rates designers will have to adapt their industry to fit a more conservative, responsible model. The power of designers is catalytic and the impacts of our decisions multiply exponentially with every manufactured product. Unfortunately the decisions we make are not always focused on the welfare of the environment, in fact they rarely ever are. This research project aimed to determine the effectiveness of design guidelines and a product evaluation tool in helping to facilitate environmental design principles for practicing industrial designers.

This thesis examines the role of intuition in the way that people operate unfamiliar devices, and the importance of this for designers. Intuition is a type of cognitive processing that is often　non-conscious and utilises stored experiential knowledge. Intuitive interaction involves the use of knowledge gained from other products and/or experiences. Therefore, products that people use intuitively are those with features they have encountered before. This position has been supported by two initial experimental studies, which revealed that prior exposure to products employing similar features helped participants to complete set tasks more quickly and intuitively, and that familiar　features were intuitively used more often than unfamiliar ones. Participants who had a higher level of familiarity with similar technologies were able to use significantly more of the　features intuitively the first time they　encountered them, and were significantly quicker at doing the tasks. Those who were less familiar with relevant technologies required more　assistance. A third experiment was designed to test four different interface designs on a remote control in order to establish which of two variables - a feature's appearance or its location - was more important in making a design intuitive to use. As with the previous experiments, the findings of Experiment 3 suggested that performance is　affected by a person's level of familiarity with similar technologies. Appearance (shape, size and labelling of buttons) seems to be the variable that most affects time spent on a task and intuitive uses. This suggests that the cues that people store in memory about a product's features depend on how the features look, rather than where on the product they are placed. Three principles of intuitive interaction have been developed. A conceptual tool has also been devised to guide designers in their planning for intuitive interaction. Designers can work with these in order to make interfaces intuitive to use, and thus help users to adapt more easily to new products and product types.

This Master of Design study aims to communicate affective design principles within a Tait Electronics Ltd hand-held radio for the New Zealand Police to use in the year 2018. This investigation has three distinct research aims: A) Identify affective design principles appropriate for the design of current Tait portable police radios using the perceptual product experience (PPE) framework (Warell, 2008). B) Use speculative scenario planning to develop an understanding of how the requirements of Tait’s portable police radios will evolve over the next 10 years. C) Incorporate affective design principles and the brand values of Tait’s product range into a final conceptual portable police radio design for the year 2018. A comprehensive review of contemporary affective product design theory, case studies and other relevant literature was undertaken. This included affective product design (Warell, 2008), radio communication (Marzano, 2005) and future product forecasting (Lambourne, Feiz, & Rigot, 1997). Following this review the following research methods were selected for this study: 1) Future scenario planning 2) Current product-user interviews 3) Passive product observations Throughout the project iterative design methods were used, including 2D concept generation, concept development and 3D prototyping. The resulting conceptual product and associated documentation of this study will add to the existing body of knowledge around the application of affective design principles and portable police radio product design. Keywords: radio, NZ Police, usability, performance, experience, perceptual product experience (PPE), affective product design

Στη βιομηχανία, το σημερινό παγκόσμιο επιχειρησιακό περιβάλλον, χαρακτηρίζεται από πρωτοφανή ανταγωνισμό και απαιτητικούς πελάτες, οι οποίοι επιζητούν καινοτόμες και ταχείες λύσεις. Η κατανόηση και η βελτιστοποίηση των διαδικασιών σχεδιασμού θεωρείται ακρογωνιαίος λίθος επιτυχίας σε ένα τόσο γρήγορα εξελισσόμενο περιβάλλον. Η ελαχιστοποίηση του χρόνου εισαγωγής ενός προϊόντος στην αγορά και η διατήρηση της ποιότητας του, σε υψηλά επίπεδα, έχουν γίνει οι κύριοι παράγοντες της επιτυχίας του. Για αυτό το λόγο, κρίθηκε επιτακτική η ανάγκη ύπαρξης ενός συνεργατικού διαδικτυακού εργαλείου για το σχεδιασμό των εκάστοτε προϊόντων. Στη παρούσα εργασία, σχεδιάστηκε και υλοποιήθηκε μια Διαδικτυακή Πλατφόρμα Συνεργασίας (ΔΠΣ), η οποία παρέχει τη δυνατότητα συνεργασίας μεταξύ πολλών απομακρυσμένων χρηστών, σε πραγματικό χρόνο, πάνω στο σχεδιασμό και την αξιολόγηση ενός προϊόντος. Σκοπός της εργασίας ήταν να δημιουργηθεί μια αποδοτική, αξιόπιστη και εύκολη στο χειρισμό της Διαδικτυακή Πλατφόρμα, για την εποπτεία, αξιολόγηση και επικύρωση του σχεδιασμού ενός προϊόντος, σε όλες τις φάσεις της ανάπτυξης του. Λειτουργίες, όπως η διαχείριση χρηστών, έργων, ρόλων και αρχείων, αναπτύχθηκαν και ενσωματώθηκαν σε μια ολοκληρωμένη πλατφόρμα, που επιτρέπει στους χρήστες να εργάζονται κατά τρόπο συνεργατικό και κατανεμημένο, μειώνοντας έτσι αρκετά το χρόνο που απαιτείται για την ολοκλήρωση της φάσης σχεδιασμού των προϊόντων. Στην εργασία αυτή, παρουσιάστηκαν και εκτιμήθηκαν οι δυνατότητες που παρέχει η συνδυασμένη χρήση της Java, των σχεσιακών συστημάτων βάσεων δεδομένων, σε ένα περιβάλλον τριών επιπέδων (3-tier), για την υλοποίηση ολοκληρωμένων πληροφοριακών συστημάτων. Η τεχνολογία που χρησιμοποιήθηκε για την κατασκευή του συστήματος είναι η Java σαν γλώσσα προγραμματισμού, η οποία επιτρέπει στο σύστημα να εγκαθίσταται σε πολλά διαφορετικά περιβάλλοντα, η Oracle για την αποθήκευση των δεδομένων, η JSP για την ανάπτυξη δυναμικών ιστοσελίδων, ο Tomcat ως web server καθώς και η XML για την επικοινωνία και την ανταλλαγή δεδομένων στα υπάρχοντα συστήματα. Οι μέθοδοι και οι προσεγγίσεις που χρησιμοποιήθηκαν είναι γενικές και έτσι υπάρχει η δυνατότητα να εφαρμοστούν σε πολλούς και διαφορετικούς μεταξύ τους οργανισμούς. / In industry, the current world operational environment, is characterized by unprecedented competition and demanding customers, who seek innovative and rapid solutions. The comprehension and optimization of the design processes are considered the corner stone of success in such a rapidly evolving environment. Minimizing the time that a product enters into the market and the maintenance of its quality at high levels, have become the main factors of its success. For this reason, there was an imperative need for the existence of a collaborative web tool for the designing of each product. In the present work, a Collaborative Web Platform (CWP), which enables the collaboration among several users, in real time, on the design and the evaluation of a product or production procedure, has been designed and implemented for remote users. The aim of this work was that an efficient, reliable and easy to use system for collaborative design be created, for the monitoring, evaluation and ratification of designing, in all of the stages of a product’s development. Operations of web collaboration, as is the management of users, roles, tasks and files, were developed and they were incorporated into an integrated platform that allowed the users to work in a collaborative and distributed way, thus decreasing considerably the time, required for the completion of the design stage. In this work, the possibilities provided by the combined use of Java and the relational data bases systems, in a three-level environment for the implementation of integrated informative systems, have been evaluated. The technologies used for the implementation of the system was Java, as a programming language, which allows for the system to be installed in a lot of different environments, Oracle for the storage of data, the JSP for the development of dynamic web pages, the Apache Tomcat, as a web server, as well as the XML language for the communication and the exchange of data in the existing systems. The methods and approaches used are general and thus, there exists the possibility that they be applied to several organizations that are different from each other.

La mise sur le marché de nouveaux produits constitue un enjeu stratégique pour les entreprises et notamment pour les PME&PMI. Les projets de développement de produits sont en règle générale bien maîtrisés localement au sein des entreprises mais sont confrontés à de réelles difficultés dès lors qu’ils requièrent une étroite collaboration des partenaires. L'idée force dans cette recherche est liée au fait que pour accroître l’efficacité de tout projet de développement de produits il est impératif de prendre en considération, le plus tôt possible, les contraintes liées au réseau de partenaires support à son exécution. Notre contribution s'inscrit dans le cadre de la méthodologie Co-Evolution Produit et réseau de partenaireS (CEPS) développée au sein de notre laboratoire. Cette thèse explore les dépendances entre les partenaires du réseau et propose une méthode d’évaluation a priori de l’intégrabilité de tout nouveau partenaire. Cette méthode est supportée par un prototype d'aide à la décision utilisable par les décideurs. / Abstract

Product customisation has always been a regular practice as a form of self or group identification. Previous studies have demonstrated that when investing time and effort to customise a product, an emotional attachment to that product develops. Since the 1980s, new technologies in design, manufacturing and communications have facilitated customisation practices for mass manufacturers as well as for individual consumers. For example, computer algorithms can now automate customisation (i.e. individualise), meaning that the investment of time and effort can be significantly lower than in other customisation processes. Such novel automated practices have, however, not considered the effects on emotional attachment to products, which occurs when the consumer personally engages in the process. This research investigates individualisation as a form of customisation by looking at the relationship between an individualised product and the consumers’ attribution of value and emotional attachment to the end result. This was achieved through a mixed methods approach: following a literature review, in-depth interviews, observation and experiments were carried out. Four pilot studies were conducted, involving 42 respondents (designers, company directors, and consumers). The main study engaged a further 44 respondents, profiled as one of two types of consumers depending on their critical engagement with customisation processes, namely Active Consumers (AC) that Passive Consumers (PC). Data was collected through five Action Research cycles and incorporated key features of Design-Based Research. It was then processed, coded and analysed using thematic analysis. This study makes contributions to knowledge in the area of product customisation and individualisation, as well as in the research methods developed, applied and refined over the four pilot iterations and in the main study. Results suggest that despite limiting freedom of choice, individualisation is a valuable approach to product customisation, particularly for PCs willing to relinquish part of the decision making to an automated process, in order to obtain a customised and unique design. ACs, on the other hand, value their freedom to customise their own products and see individualisation as a limitation to the customisation experience and as a hindrance to developing emotional attachment to the product. These findings have the potential to inform entrepreneurs’ and designers’ decisions to better understand and exploit the benefits associated to individualisation processes. Offering specific consumer groups opportunities to engage with the individualisation process can trigger a strong emotional product attachment and potentially generate new business opportunities.

Metal foams have many attractive properties such as light weight, low relative density, energy absorption capability etc. One of the main advantages of metal foam is that the foam inherits several properties of the parent metal, at the same time, at a fraction of the weight. Metal foams are basically of two types; closed pore and open pore. In the open pore configuration the highly porous structure with large surface to volume ratio is attractive in thermal applications such as heat exchangers, small scale refrigeration, diesel exhaust cooling and heat sink for electronics. Large surface area to volume ratio of the heat transfer area is an important parameter in design of heat exchangers. Application of open cell metal foam as a heat exchanger involves production of the metal foam, cutting/drilling the metal foam to required dimensions and attaching it to a substrate or duct. Foams are cut by various methods such as by using circular saw, band saw, abrasive sawing wire or electrical discharge machining. Cutting or drilling operations plastically deform the struts and affect the surface roughness of the struts and hence, the contact area between the foam and the substrate. The foam and the substrate are then joined to get the final product. Various techniques are adopted to join the foam and substrate that includes, press fit, welding, soldering, brazing and use of epoxy adhesives or thermal glue. These methods either deform the foam plastically or involve a bonding material which involves an additional step in manufacturing and is generally necessary to reduce the thermal resistance at the interface. Every secondary step involved in machining the foam and joining it to substrate/duct add to the energy, time and cost of the component. Significant amount of materials wastage occurs during the production and machining steps of the metal foam. Bonding material used for attaching foam to the substrate makes the recycling of the heat exchangers difficult. In the present research work the above issues were rectified by introducing a novel method of fabricating the heat exchanger in a single step. This can be done by producing open cell foam, bonded to the substrate in a single step to get the ready to use heat exchanger. The uniqueness of the method/ process is that it provides an advantage of manufacturing heat exchangers consisting of open cell aluminium foam both inside and outside the aluminium duct/substrate. Here open cell metal foam is metallurgic ally bonded to the aluminium duct without producing any distortion in the aluminium duct. The present method avoids the secondary cutting and joining operations, hence reducing material and energy wastage. This heat exchanger does not need a bonding material at the foam duct interface which makes the product completely recyclable without even having to separate the aluminium foam and, many-at-times, the copper substrate. Further, in the present process no hazardous material is involved in the fabrication process of the heat exchanger and all the materials used for the foam production can be recycled. Another unique advantage of this process is that the foam can also be cast inside and outside the tube in a single step. This helps increase the heat transfer area per unit volume inside the tube increasing the effectiveness significantly. First, an attempt was made to cast aluminium foam over a Cu substrate. Spheres made of Plaster of Paris (PoP) were used as space holders to create pores in the foam. First, a dough of PoP was prepared by mixing sufficient amount of water with the powder of PoP. Small pieces of PoP were taken from the dough and were rolled by hands to prepare spherical balls. Next, a casting setup was made where a die made of stainless steel was placed in a crucible whose bottom was filled with sand. A tube/duct made of copper was placed at the centre of the die and PoP balls were dropped around the duct. This setup was then placed in a furnace and was preheated to remove all the moisture from the PoP. Molten aluminium at around 700 °C was poured into the preheated die. After solidification, the die was opened and cast was allowed to cool in ambient air. PoP balls were removed by using a sharp needle and by dipping the casting in acetic acid. After removal of PoP from the cast, interconnected holes/cavities formed in the place of space holders/PoP balls, forming pores in the foam. There are some limitations of this method such as removal of PoP was tedious and needed chemicals that need to be discarded, PoP cannot be recycled and creates waste, small amount of moisture present in PoP balls can cause an explosion. The bonding between aluminium foam and Cu substrate obtained was not good, giving rise to thermal contact resistance. Due to the above limitations further implementation of this process using PoP was not explored further. There was a need of space holder material which can withstand the temperature of molten Al and also can be removed easily from the cast without any use of chemicals. Obtaining metallic bonding between foam and Cu substrate was difficult due to the corrosion layer formation at the interface of Al and Cu substrate due to preheating. If preheating was not carried out full penetration of the molten aluminium did not take place in the space available in between the spheres. Therefore, it was decided to cast Al foam over Al substrate. The main challenge and difficulty was to cast open cell Al foam inside and outside the tube/duct made of the same material (Al) without distorting the tube/duct as well as achieving consistent metallic bonding between the two. This has been successfully done by gravity casting method a single step manufactured and ready to use open cell Al foam heat exchanger were fabricated. A casting setup was prepared, which consisted of a commercially pure aluminium tube placed in the middle of a stainless steel split die. The gap between the tube and die was filled with the salt spheres. An uncommon and new approach was adopted to produce NaCl salt spheres. NaCl salt balls (spherical and ovoid) of different diameters were processed by casting route. The casting step of NaCl is necessary as the moisture present in NaCl can be completely removed during the melting of NaCl. NaCl was chosen as it had a melting point higher than aluminium. The casting setup was placed in a furnace and was preheated to various temperatures up to 550 °C. Commercially pure aluminium was melted separately in a crucible and was poured into the steel die at 700oC. The liquid metal flows through the die and fills the cavities between the salt balls. The die was opened immediately after solidification of molten Al and cast was allowed to cool in ambient air. The salt (NaCl), which was still solid, was dissolved in water to get the foam structure. With proper control of the preheat temperature and temperature of liquid aluminium no distortion of the aluminium duct was observed throughout the length of the heat exchanger. Consistent and complete fusion/ metallic bonding was observed at the interface of Al foam and Al substrate/duct. Several heat exchangers with different porosity and pore geometry with the aluminium foam cast outside the tube and both inside and outside of the tube were fabricated. The beauty of the designed method is that it is simple and cost effective and eliminates the major issue of thermal contact resistance since the foam and the duct are made of the same material and are bonded in the liquid state leaving no interface between the foam and the duct. Further, foam can also be cast inside the duct in the same step while casting the foam outside the tube, giving an integral heat exchanger which has higher heat transfer surface area to volume ratio inside and outside the duct. This is expected to further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the heat exchanger An added advantage of this method is that the heat exchanger can be recycled easily in a single step re-melting route. Further, the heat exchanger does not use any hazardous material during manufacture that needs attention during recycling. After the production and fabrication of the heat exchangers, the thermal performance or effectiveness of the heat exchangers was assessed, to evaluate its usefulness and suitability for heat transfer application. An experimental test setup was fabricated in the laboratory to perform the heat transfer tests. The experimental test setup consists of the following major components;1) A test chamber whose function was to insulate the heat exchangers from the surroundings and to avoid any heat loss to the surroundings, 2) An air blower used to supply cold fluid (air) to the test chamber, 3) A constant temperature bath was used to supply the hot fluid, which was water in this case, in the duct of the heat exchanger, 4) A rotameter was used to measure the volumetric flow rate of the cold fluid and 5) A pressure gauge having the pressure measurement range between 1 mbar to 160 mbar to measure the pressure drop across the test chamber. K-type chromel – alumel thermocouples having temperature measurement range between -270 °C to 1,260 °C were used to measure the temperature of hot and cold fluids during the experiments. By aid of the data logger system and computer, temperature readings were recorded during the tests and were used further for the heat transfer calculations. For testing the aluminium foam heat exchangers was placed in the insulated test chamber. Hot water was supplied inside the duct of heat exchanger whereas air at room temperature was supplied around the foams at varying flow rates during the tests. During the tests, temperature readings were taken at steady state condition. NTU-Effectiveness method was used to evaluate the thermal performance of heat exchangers. Overall results obtained by this experimental study are as follows • As the inlet temperature difference between hot and the cold fluids increases the heat transfer rate and the effectiveness of the heat exchangers also increases. • At a constant flow rate of hot fluid, heat exchangers exhibits significantly better thermal performance at lower flow rate of cold fluid compared to higher flow rate. As the flow rate of cold fluid increases, the velocity of the fluid increases and consequently, reduces the optimum interaction time between hot and the cold fluids required for the efficient heat transfer. • At a constant and low flow rate of cold fluid the effectiveness of the heat exchanger increases as the porosity of the foam increases. But when the flow rate of cold fluid was increased further after a certain limit, the effectiveness value of the heat exchanger decreases. • Heat exchanger consisting of foam of higher porosity exhibits higher effective. • Heat exchanger having foam inside and outside of the duct/tube exhibits significantly higher effectiveness compared to Al duct, Cu duct and other heat exchanger tested. • At a higher flow rate of the cold fluid, the heat exchangers consisting of foams of higher porosity, experience more drop in effectiveness compared to the heat exchanger having foams of low porosity. • Pressure drop across the length of the foam/fin increases as the volumetric flow rate of the cold fluid (m3/s) increases. • Surface area per unit volume and effectiveness values for bare Al tube is very low compared to Al foam heat exchangers resulting in the bare Al tube exhibiting much lower effectiveness compared to heat exchanger made of Al foam. • For a certain flow rate of fluids, the effectiveness of the heat exchanger increases up to a certain thickness of the Al foam. • Regardless of the thickness of the foam, the effectiveness of the heat exchangers is low at higher flow rate of cold fluid compared to lower flow rate. • These foam based heat exchanger had a much higher effectiveness when compared to that of other heat exchangers, data of which were got from literature. The present experimental study concludes that fuse bonding open cell aluminium foam over an Al duct or Al substrate can improve the thermal performance of the heat exchanger significantly. The thesis includes five chapters. Chapter 1 gives a detailed introduction about the metal foam, heat exchangers, thermal contact resistance and its effect on the heat transfer rate has been explained. This chapter also includes the overall aim and motivation for the research work. Chapter 2 covers the literature available on production methods of metal foam and its limitations has been listed out. And conventional methods of manufacturing open cell metal foam heat exchangers and its disadvantages have been explained in detailed. Chapter 3 covers in detail the novel method of production and fabrication of open cell metal foam heat exchangers. Chapter 4 includes an experimental study, where thermal performance of heat exchangers has been assessed through heat transfer experiments. Chapter 5 is the conclusions and future works.