Orientador: Luis Carlos Paschoarelli / Banca: José Alberto de Souza Freitas / Banca: José Carlos Plácido da Silva / Resumo: Segundo o último censo realizado pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE (2002), o Brasil possuía um contingente de aproximadamente 15 milhões de pessoas com idade acima de 60 anos, ou seja, as pessoas idosas representavam 8,6% da população brasileira na época. Portanto, o crescimento da populaçã de idosos tanto no Brasil quanto no mundo, já está bastante delineado pelas estatísticas demográficas. Outras pesquisas apontam que uma parcela representativa desses idosos, necessita de assistência tecnológica específica para que as Atividades da Vida Diária (AVD's) sejam realizadas com maior plenitude. O uso de cadeiras de rodas, por exemplo, além de facilitar a realização da locomoção e o processo de reabilitação do estado de saúde, tem por objetivo integrar socialmente o indivíduo. Porém, idosos quando fazem uso de cadeiras de rodas acabam se tornando vítimas dessa tecnologia, ora pela falta de conforto ou segurança, ora pela ineficiência que o produto gera para interface tecnológica, o que favorece a complicação do quadro patológico e do processo de reabilitação. As "Tecnologias Assistivas", em especial as cadeiras de rodas, não estão adequadas tecnicamente às necessidades fisiológicas e psicológicas dos idosos. Diante desse quadro crítico e analítico buscou-se entender porque esses equipamentos não oferecem condições mínimas para a manutenção e muito menos para a reabilitação do estado de saúde do indivíduo. Inferiu-se que a falta de recomendações projetuais estava diretamente relacionado com esse problema. Portanto, o objetivo dessa pesquisa foi buscar considerações de relevância para a prática projetual de cadeira de rodas e fundamentou-se a busca desas considerações nos conceitos do Design Ergonômico. A sistemática metodológica desenvolvida em três partes esteve apoiada em abordagens de caráter teórico... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: According to the last demographic census conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) (2002), Brazil possessed a contingent of approximately 15 million inhabitants aged above 60 years old, in other words, the elderly people represented 8,6% of the Brazilian population at that time. Therefore, the growth of the seniors' population in Brazil and in the world, is already quite delineated by the statistics. Other researches show that a representative portion of those seniors, needs specific technological attendance so that the Activities of the Daily Life (ADL's) can be accomplished at full. The use of wheelchairs, for example, besides facilitating locomotion as well as the process of rehabilitation of the health condition, has the objective of integrating the individual socially. However, when the elderly make use of wheelchairs they end up turning into victims of that technology, either for the comfort they bring lack of safety, or for the inefficiency that the product generates for the technological interface, which in turn favors the complication of the pathological picture and the rehabilitation process. The "Technologies Assistive", especially the wheelchairs, are not adapted technically to the seniors' physiologic and psychological needs. In face of that critical and analytical picture it has been sought to understand why such equipment does not offer the minimum conditions for the maintenance nor for the rehabilitation of the individual's health condition. It was inferred that the lack of design specification were directly related with that problem. Therefore, the objective of that research was to look for considerations of relevance to propose the design of a wheelchair. Those considerations were based in the concepts of the Ergonomic Design. The sytematic methodology which was developed in theree parts was based on the approaches of theoretical...(Complete abstract, click electronic access below) / Mestre

Para compreender o significado da carteira masculina de bolso e sua importância na história cotidiana humana, fez-se necessário, primeiramente, o resgate pela origem da palavra por meio do estudo etimológico e a busca por sua raiz, bem como seu aparecimento apresentado por uma datação. Para a inserção do objeto de estudo no âmbito do design de produto, apresentando-o como uma resposta as necessidades cotidianas em voga, foram necessárias incursões ao campo da moda, a compreensão de seus conceitos assim como suas áreas de atuação, onde, atualmente, se encontra instalada as raras informações a respeito da carteira masculina. Por fim, o resgate dos padrões monetários brasileiros, compreendendo e analisando-os formalmente, bem como a necessidade de levantamento das formas adquiridas pelo dinheiro monetário e pelos documentos pessoais portados nas carteiras como elementos possíveis de alterações de projeto do artefato deste estudo após o cruzamento de dados com exemplos de carteiras adquiridas ao longo do trabalho. / To understand the significance of the masculine pocket wallet and its importance in day by day human history, it was first necessary to recover the origin of the word through study and the search for its etymological root as well as its appearance presented by a dating. For the insertion of the object of study within the product design, presenting it as a response to everyday needs in vogue, it has been done necessary incursions into the field of fashion, the understanding of its concepts as well as their areas of expertise, where, currently, is installed the scarce information about the men\'s wallet. Finally, the recovering of Brazilian monetary standards, formally understanding and analyzing them as well as the need for survey the acquired shapes of money and personal documents ported in wallets as possible elements of design changes in the object of this study after matching data with examples of wallets acquired during the this work.

This thesis focuses on product design change in the fast fashion market and its impact on supplier companies. Theorizing from the relationship between product design and suppliers within an overarching framework of the supply chain and product design literatures, the research develops what impact product design changes have on supplier companies and how those changes connect to the performance of supplier companies. The multiple case study draws on interview data with 20 participants from a famous high-street fashion retailer and eight of its suppliers. This research validates that product design changes in the fast fashion market have physical and non-physical impacts across supplier company departments, and shows that these impacts connect significantly to the performance of supplier companies. This research contributes to the supply chain and product design literatures by providing an understanding of how product design changes create chain-like-effects, both internally and externally to supplier companies. This can catalyse supplier company strategy, which mitigates product design change to avoid this chain-like-effect. Practically, this thesis offers guidance for retailers and suppliers in creating solutions for the problems that they encounter during the product design change process by revealing the cause and effect relationship of product design changes and supplier companies. The results are currently limited to the fashion industry, and they are yet to be generalised to other buyer-driven commodity chains. Future research should focus on best practices for management to deal with the impact of product design change and in consideration in other industries.

Para a estruturação e qualificação do pensamento criativo alguns educadores sugerem a utilização de modelos de aprendizagem baseados na ampliação das capacidades associativas dos alunos. Neste cenário emerge a Teoria das Affordances como ferramenta, tanto para compreender como o indivíduo interage com os objetos, quanto para ampliar essa interatividade. Focando um design orientado para a ampliação da utilidade dos produtos, o presente estudo explora a aplicação da Teoria das Affordances como estratégia para identificar novas possibilidades de uso dos objetos e analisa como esta aplicação interfere no processo criativo de alunos de Design. O delineamento experimental baseou-se no Plano de Quatro Grupos, de Richard Solomon, e os participantes do estudo exploratório foram alunos de cursos de graduação em Design de quatro instituições privadas de ensino brasileiras. A análise qualitativa e quantitativa dos dados sugere que a exploração de affordances em sala de aula, ao induzir a abstração, potencializa a emergência de alternativas de uso que, incorporadas ao processo de design, podem conferir versatilidade e aumentar as possibilidades de inovação na concepção de produtos. Os resultados da pesquisa deverão ser ainda ulteriormente confrontados com resultados de novos testes para que seja possível confirmar as hipóteses sobre a importância do uso de associações estruturadas (affordances) no ensino e no processo de design de produtos. / To qualify creative thinking, some educators suggest the use of learning models based on expansion of associative capacities of the students. In this scenario, the Theory of Affordances emerges as a tool to understand how the individual interacts with objects and to increase this interactivity. Focusing utility-oriented design, this study explores the application of the Theory of Affordances as a strategy to identify new possibilities for use of objects and analyzes how this application interferes within the creative process of Design students. The experiment was based on Solomon’s Four-Group Design and the participants of the exploratory study were students of undergraduate courses in Design of four Brazilian private colleges. The qualitative and quantitative data analysis suggests that the exploitation of affordances in the classroom, to induce abstraction, enhances the emergence of use alternatives, and incorporated into the design process may provide versatility and increase opportunities for innovation in product design. The research results must still be faced with further results of new experiments to confirm the hypothesis about the importance of structured associations use (affordances) in education and product design process.

O brinquedo é um importante artefato na infância. Através dele a criança tem oportunidade de desenvolver suas competências e habilidades. Para criança com deficiência visual, além disso, a utilização do brinquedo pode servir como um potencial estimulador de seus resquícios visuais e sentidos remanescentes. O objetivo principal dessa pesquisa é o de propor orientações para designers no projeto de brinquedos a fim de facilitar o processo de desenvolvimento desses produtos enfocando as necessidades das crianças com deficiência visual. O trabalho escrito está organizado na disposição de cinco capítulos, a saber: Introdução, Revisão de Literatura, Metodologia, Desenvolvimento e Finalização. A metodologia, por sua vez, está exposta em etapas consecutivas: a Etapa 1 diz respeito a revisão de literatura, essa foi uma importante etapa da qual foi extraída uma análise qualitativa de dados a respeito dos temas abordados que foram: processo de desenvolvimento de produtos, usabilidade, o brinquedo e a criança com deficiência visual. A Etapa 2 é o desenvolvimento que apresenta-se dividido em dois itens principais: o estudo de direcionado e a delimitação das orientações. No estudo direcionado utilizaram-se informações levantadas a partir da revisão de literatura para realização do desenvolvimento do projeto de brinquedos através de fases metodológicas previstas para geração de produtos em Löbach (2001) com a participação de usuários (crianças com deficiência visual, familiares e profissionais envolvidos no atendimento dessas crianças). Posteriormente, na Etapa 3 com a organização dessas orientações prévias modelou-se um questionário aplicado com designers e profissionais de áreas afins para observar a opinião sobre o compendio de orientações previamente delimitadas. Assim, os resultados apontaram que a maioria das pessoas questionadas possuía pouco conhecimento sobre o tópico deficiência visual. Os entrevistados consideraram as informações delimitadas pertinentes e apontaram que um aprofundamento em alguns tópicos melhoraria o entendimento dos mesmos. / The toy is an important artifact in childhood. Through it the child has the opportunity to develop their skills and abilities. Children with visual impairments, besides the use of the toy can serve as a potential enhancer of its remaining traces and visual senses. The main objective of this research is to propose guidelines for designers in the design of toys to facilitate the process of developing these products focusing on the needs of children with visual impairment. The written work is organized in five chapters available, namely: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Development and Completion. The methodology, in turn, is exposed in consecutive steps: Step 1 concerns the literature review, this was an important step which was extracted from a qualitative analysis of data regarding the topics discussed were: the process of product development, usability , toy and children with visual impairments. Step 2 is the development that has been divided into two main items: the study of directed and delineation guidelines. In the study we used directed information gathered from the literature review to completion of project development toys through methodological phases planned for generation of products Lobach (2001 ) with the participation of users ( visually impaired children , families and professionals involved in the care of these children ). Subsequently, in Step 3 with the organization of these guidelines prior modeled whether a questionnaire with designers and professionals in related fields to observe the review of compendium of guidelines previously delimited. Thus, the results indicated that the majority of those questioned had little knowledge about the topic visually impaired. Respondents considered the relevant information delimited and pointed to a deepening in some topics would improve understanding of the same.

O presente trabalho teve por objetivo classificar as técnicas criativas utilizadas no processo de desenvolvimento de produto, através de uma taxonomia facetada. Essa taxonomia originou uma tabela de referência que pode auxiliar designers, engenheiros, arquitetos, publicitários e outros profissionais que utilizam processo criativo a escolherem a(s) técnica(s) criativa(s) mais adequada(s) aos diferentes requisitos de projeto e características da equipe projetista. Para a elaboração da taxonomia, foram abordadas duas áreas do conhecimento: o processo de desenvolvimento de produto, com ênfase nas técnicas criativas, e a teoria da classificação, com o objetivo de conhecer e aplicar uma metodologia com finalidade prática e foco no usuário. Os resultados deste trabalho foram a compilação e a classificação de 31 técnicas criativas, sob 6 facetas, a listar: quantidade de participantes, perfil técnico dos participantes, característica do problema a ser resolvido, ação utilizada na técnica criativa, exigência de ferramental e tempo de execução da técnica. / This work’s aim to classify the creative techniques used at product development process, through a faceted taxonomy. This taxonomy has led to a reference table that can help designers, engineers, architects, advertisers and other professionals who use creative process to choose the most appropriate creative technique(s) to different design goals and characteristics of the design team. In developing the taxonomy were addressed two areas of knowledge: the product development process, with emphasis on creative techniques, and the theory of classification, in order to know and apply a methodology with practical purpose and focus on the user. The results of this study were the compilation and the classification of 31 creative techniques under six facets, which are: number of participants, technical profile of the participants, nature of the problem to be solved, creative technique used in the action, demand for tooling and runtime of the technique.

This thesis seeks to extend the PDG methodology by developing a generalized formal method for nesting PDGs in an interconnected system. A procedure for decomposing an individual PDG into reusable modules will be defined and a software architecture will be presented which takes advantage of these reusable modules. This method breaks the PDG structure into discrete elements known as PDG objects, PDG modules and PDG services. Each of these elements forms a distinct unit of reuse and each can be seen as a "little" PDG. Two different industrial implementations of this method are presented. These examples show that it is possible to share PDG services amongst multiple PDGs and provide a mechanism to create a PDG for a complicated system.

Decisions Support Systems (DSSs) are used to enhance decision maker speed and effectiveness. However, without a view of an entire system, any decision may have unanticipated effects such as sub-optimal outcomes. The purpose of this research is to show that with a system-level analysis, more informed decisions can be made that take into account a larger system or greater number of dimensions or objectives. This research also explores the benefits of using a DSS over analysis of unprocessed data and the effectiveness of integrating a product design generator (PDG) with a business DSS, creating a system DSS, where system-level effects can be analyzed. These are connected using software which allows them to be interactive, and dynamically updating. After this DSS was developed a variation was also made and decision makers evaluated these tools to identify how they performed in comparison to each other. In one variation, aspects of the tool were split up, guiding the decision maker through the analysis while the other did not. Using survey questions and recording decision makers' actions, it was found that decision makers are significantly faster and came to better conclusions when using the DSS over unprocessed data. However, it was also seen that the difference between the two variants of the System DSS tests was insignificant. This suggests that the limits in potential interactions in the one variant of a system DSS did not substantially reduce the ability of a decision maker to explore and make good design decisions. Overall this research showed that having a system-level tool is better than the unprocessed data, and that more extreme differences in a DSS are required for improved comparisons to establish which visualizations and elements are most effective in a System DSS. Future effort should be made to completely isolate different portions of the System DSS and see how well users are able to make decisions with it compared to the full system analysis.

The U.N. projects the world population to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, which will cause demand for manufactured goods to reach unforeseen levels. In order for us to produce the goods to support an equitable future, the methods in which we manufacture those goods must radically change. The emerging Circular Economy (CE) concept for production systems has promised to drastically increase economic/business value by significantly reducing the world’s resource consumption and negative environmental impacts. However, CE is inherently limited because of its emphasis on recycling and reuse of materials. CE does not address the holistic changes needed across all of the fundamental elements of manufacturing: products, processes, and systems. Therefore, a paradigm shift is required for moving from sustainment to sustainability to “produce more with less” through smart, innovative and transformative convergent manufacturing approaches rooted in redesigning next generation manufacturing infrastructure. This PhD research proposes the Helical Economy (HE) concept as a novel extension to CE. The proposed HE concepts shift the CE’s status quo paradigm away from post-use recovery for recycling and reuse and towards redesigning manufacturing infrastructure at product, process, and system levels, while leveraging IoT-enabled data infrastructures and an upskilled workforce. This research starts with the conceptual overview and a framework for implementing HE in the discrete product manufacturing domain by establishing the future state vision of the Helical Economy Manufacturing Method (HEMM). The work then analyzes two components of the framework in detail: designing next-generation products and next-generation IoT-enabled data infrastructures. The major research problems that need to be solved in these subcomponents are identified in order to make near-term progress towards the HEMM. The work then proceeds with the development and discussion of initial methods for addressing these challenges. Each method is demonstrated using an illustrative industry example. Collectively, this initial work establishes the foundational body of knowledge for the HE and the HEMM, provides implementation methods at the product and IoT-enabled data infrastructure levels, and it shows a great potential for HE’s ability to create and maximize sustainable value, optimize resource consumption, and ensure continued technological progress with significant economic growth and innovation. This research work then presents an outlook on the future work needed, as well as calls for industry to support the continued refinement and development of the HEMM through relevant prototype development and subsequent applications.

TumbleTime is a children's customizable play area that is both fun and educational. Planned to be produced in foam and vinyl fabric, TumbleTime resembles a gymnastic mat. The design is involved geometry that allows children to discover geometric relationships while playing with their furniture. TumbleTime has thousands of configurations demonstrated by 3D computer renderings and animations produced using Autodesk 3ds Max.