This study examines gender typing of industrial products in the activity of industrial design. Thus firstly, the meaning of gender, related theories and gender stereotypes have been reviewed through the literature survey in order to pinpoint the stereotypical attributes assigned to men and women through society and culture. Secondly, the effect of the stereotypical gender attributes on the act of possessing products have been examined. In return, a literature survey on the cognitive aspects of design has been conducted in order to question whether these gender attributes might have a similar impact on the design activity. The findings of the literature survey pointed towards categorical information processing theories as an appropriate tool to gender type products and also as a tool to measure the gender qualities of a product. To test the applicability of the methodology of categorization a study has been conducted with industrial designers and industrial design students in which the students were asked to design gender typed products and industrial designers were asked to rate their perceptions of genderedness of the designs. The test revealed the existence of a mental library consisting of categorized images corresponding to stereotypical gender attributes in the individuals, thus preparing the grounds for the use of this process in the industrial design activity.

Queue buildup is a problem that every fast food restaurant would like to reduce, as its effect on customer satisfaction and restaurant revenue is obviously negative. This thesis looks at how a dynamic menu management system would affect fast food restaurants, specifically how the promotion of fast products, in certain situations, would affect total revenue and queue lengths. A neural network was used to categorize products depending on their preparation time and to predict queue waiting times. A simulation approach was used to find out how the menu management system would affect the restaurant. The results are that in situations where long queues are formed, the promotion of fast products increases revenue by 7.8% and decreases queue lengths by 13.3%. In situations where little to no queues are formed, the same system still decreases queue lengths by 4.7%, but also decreases revenue by 0.2%