There are lots of elements involved in the design of a car. This study, which is inspired by the brief of BMW group, explores the seating unit of cars with regard to prototypical activities, such as, listening to music, working, looking outside etc. The current study proposes that these external stimuli have an effect on comfort experience and felt emotions. So, this study explores the relationship between types of music and activities typically performed by car passengers and emotion and comfort perception, through performing a within subject design empirical study. A car seat provided by BMW group was used to test the above mentioned relationships. Data was collected through a self-report questionnaire, heart rate equipment, a pressure mat and analyzed separately for each condition. Results of the study show that there is a successful emotion induction by task and music individually, and partly on task*music interaction. A comparison of congruent and non-congruent situations, i.e. high arousal music and high arousal task or low arousal music and low arousal task, showed that differences occur in subjects&rsquo / reported level of arousal. Furthermore, the results of the study indicated that comfort is related to valance factors, independent of arousal levels. Lastly, physiological measurements showed that only task has a significant effect on heart rate, implicating for the complexity of linking physiological data to emotion and comfort.

In this study, we deal with the profit oriented partial disassembly line balancing problem which seeks a feasible assignment of selected disassembly tasks to stations such that the precedence relations among the tasks are satisfied and the profit is maximized. We consider two versions of this problem. In the profit maximization per cycle problem (PC), we maximize the profit for a single disassembly cycle given the task times and costs, part revenues and demands and station costs. We propose a heuristic solution approach for PC based on the liner programming relaxation of our mixed integer programming formulation. In the profit maximization over the planning horizon problem (PH), the planning horizon is divided into time zones each of which may have a different disassembly rate and a different line balance. We also incorporate other issues such as finite supply of discarded product, subassembly and released part inventories availability, and smoothing of the number of stations across the zones. PH is decomposed into a number of successive per cycle problems, which are solved by a similar heuristic approach. Computational analysis is conducted for both problems and results are reported.

This thesis proposes a design strategy for pleasant touch. Literature is reviewed on the importance of pleasant touch, existing implementations in products and design for tactility. A lack of competence is found on how to design for pleasant touch in the interface of products: functional pleasant tactility. Therefore, a design vision is created by the author as a designer, on how to design functional pleasant tactility. The envisioned design strategy is then implemented through a study where a Bang &amp / Olufsen TV remote control was used as an example case. The study includes three sequential phases: exploring, designing, and evaluating functional pleasant tactility in the given context. Exploring was done through workshops where design students were asked to touch objects with various material properties. Pleasant movements were performed with the objects, and matching functions were imagined, resulting in &lsquo / actions&rsquo / . Those actions were analyzed to discover three underlying themes of inviting, mastery and logic. In the designing phase, those themes were translated into three corresponding design concepts, and worked out into prototypes. In the evaluating phase, those prototypes were tested with that target group, and the results were used to create a final design concept. The study then concludes with a design strategy that is expected to work for the broader context of industrial design, and recommendations for further research with this strategy and different products or companies are also provided.

The notion of sustainability has become an extensive area of research ever since the term emerged in the late 1980s, due to the negative effects of unsustainable production and consumption patterns on environmental stewardship, social equity and economic development. There have been various approaches developed for product design and education within the context sustainability. Biomimicry is one of those approaches, and its implications for product design education have recently started to be explored. In this study, an educational tool - Biomimicry Sketch Analysis (BSA) - was developed and integrated into the idea-generation phase of an educational design project at the undergraduate level in the Department of Industrial Design at the Middle East Technical University (METU). This integration is analyzed throughout the graduate thesis study, to understand and explore the implications of the biomimicry approach for sustainability in product design education. The educational tool within this approach was found as influential among the third year industrial design students for the idea-generation phase, yet the results of this study included both pros and cons for the incorporation of the BSA exercise.

Mass customization is promoted in manufacturing industry as a way to satisfy individual customer requirements in a flexible, efficient and cost effective way. However, mass customization within the specific sector of &lsquo / electronic consumer goods&rsquo / is relatively underdeveloped, whilst the contributions of industrial designers to mass customization remain quite unclear. This research redresses both of these issues, elaborating on the possibilities of mass-customization in the electronic consumer goods sector, and explaining how industrial designers can take a central role in implementation. Chapter 2 contains a literature review on key terms related to mass customization. A portfolio of mass customization case studies, from both within and outside electronic consumer goods, are presented and analyzed in Chapter 3, which also reports on a new classification system to define six discrete customization types. User needs research methods, including IDEO methods, are reviewed in Chapter 4 to determine those methods most applicable for use in the pilot (Chapter 5) and main (Chapter 7) &lsquo / research through design&rsquo / customization projects. The pilot project, conducted with METU industrial design undergraduates, explored opportunities and barriers for mass customization of electronic consumer goods / the main project, carried out by the Vestel ID Team under the SAN-TEZ scheme, resulted in a new mass customized all-in-one (AIO) PC for Vestel Electronics. In Chapter 6, results of interviews with Vestel staff are presented, uncovering the current situation within Vestel Electronics for implementing mass customization. Chapter 8 contains the research conclusions, including discussion of a proposed design-based mass customization design and development procedure.

Mass customization is promoted in manufacturing industry as a way to satisfy individual customer requirements in a flexible, efficient and cost effective way. However, mass customization within the specific sector of &lsquo / electronic consumer goods&rsquo / is relatively underdeveloped, whilst the contributions of industrial designers to mass customization remain quite unclear. This research redresses both of these issues, elaborating on the possibilities of mass-customization in the electronic consumer goods sector, and explaining how industrial designers can take a central role in implementation. Chapter 2 contains a literature review on key terms related to mass customization. A portfolio of mass customization case studies, from both within and outside electronic consumer goods, are presented and analyzed in Chapter 3, which also reports on a new classification system to define six discrete customization types. User needs research methods, including IDEO methods, are reviewed in Chapter 4 to determine those methods most applicable for use in the pilot (Chapter 5) and main (Chapter 7) &lsquo / research through design&rsquo / customization projects. The pilot project, conducted with METU industrial design undergraduates, explored opportunities and barriers for mass customization of electronic consumer goods / the main project, carried out by the Vestel ID Team under the SAN-TEZ scheme, resulted in a new mass customized all-in-one (AIO) PC for Vestel Electronics. In Chapter 6, results of interviews with Vestel staff are presented, uncovering the current situation within Vestel Electronics for implementing mass customization. Chapter 8 contains the research conclusions, including discussion of a proposed design-based mass customization design and development procedure.

In this study calcium carbonate (CaCO3) particles are surface modified by using plasma polymerized natural gas and effects of surface modification of CaCO3 filler on mechanical properties of CaCO3-PP composites are investigated. Different combination of plasma factors / RF power, natural gas flow rate, and plasma discharge durations, are investigated. Mechanical properties such as tensile strength and Young&rsquo / s Modulus are measured by tensile testing machine. Storage modulus and loss modulus measurements are done by DMA. Some information about structures generated by natural gas plasma surface modification is obtained by FTIR tests. The tensile fracture surfaces of prepared composites are investigated by using SEM micrographs. It is concluded that, despite some enhancement obtained in the moduli / the technique of natural gas plasma surface modification of CaCO3 particles did not introduce significant improvement in mechanical properties of composite as expected. This result may partially be attributed to selected plasma parameters (i.e., flow rate, RF power, and discharge duration).

The topic of this master thesis is the historical investigation of kitchen tools that evolved towards a multifunctional nature. The history of kitchen tools will be discussed with particular attention given to industrialization, technological developments and the effects of mechanization. Following this analysis, there will be a classification that could serve as a resource material for future studies, made according to the activity flow within the kitchen, in order to understand the interrelations within and between these products. This classification will be put forward in the form of a visual table that includes morphological analyses of specifically mixing and beating tools under the topic of food preparation, how they developed historically following the industrial revolution, and how they carry a tendency to become increasingly multifunctional. According to this table, the dispositions and interrelations of these products will be considered, concluding with a situational analysis and previsions for future designs and studies.

Design consultancy is a service that is given by professional designers to clients to respond to their design requirements. In Turkey, design consultancy services are given through design firms since the 1980s, mostly founded by the early graduates of industrial design. This thesis is carried to recognize the firms that give service in design consultancy sector, to identify the given services as design consultancy and to determine the conditions of design consultancy sector in Turkey through a survey made on the design consultancy firms in Turkey. A questionnaire is prepared to investigate the history of design consultancy firms, their profession fields, their client firms&rsquo / sector types, scope of services, the profession&rsquo / s advantages and disadvantages, the problems and opinions consultancy is carried out in Turkey. The survey also investigates the structure of design about the future of industrial design sector. This survey also inquires how design consultancy firms, given service types and sectors of client firms in detail. Twenty design consultancy firms responded to the questionnaire. The study indicates that, design consultancy service types by the firms are mostly product design, concept development, project drawing, project management, interface design and field tests.

In this thesis, we define a new problem area for assembly lines. In the literature, there are various studies on assembly line balancing, but none of them consider multi-manned tasks, task to which at least two operators have to be assigned. Two mathematical models and one constraint programming model are developed for both Type-I and Type-II ALB problems. The objective of Type-I problem is to minimize the number of stations whereas the objective of Type-II problem is to minimize the cycle time. In addition to this, valid inequalities are introduced to make models more efficient. Moreover, heuristic algorithms for both types are developed for large-sized problems. All formulations are applied to a real case study and then experimental analysis are conducted for all formulations to see the effects of problem parameters on performance measures. Exact models are compared each other and performance of heuristic algorithms are compared against the lower bounds.