Let v ∈ Z+ and G be a simple graph. A G-decomposition of Kv is a collection F={F1,F2,...,Ft} of subgraphs of Kv such that every edge of Kv occurs in exactlyone of the subgraphs and every graph Fi ∈ F is isomorphic to G. A G-decomposition of Kv is called balanced if each vertex of Kv occurs in the same number of copies of G. In 2011, Dukes and Malloch provided an existence theory for balanced G-decompositions of Kv. Shortly afterwards, Bonisoli, Bonvicini, and Rinaldi introduced degree- and orbit-balanced G-decompositions. Similar to balanced decompositions,these two types of G-decompositions impose a local structure on the vertices of Kv. In this thesis, we will present an existence theory for degree- and orbit-balanced G-decompositions of Kv. To do this, we will first develop a theory for decomposing Kv into copies of G when G contains coloured loops. This will be followed by a brief discussion about the applications of such decompositions. Finally, we will explore anextension of this problem where Kv is decomposed into a family of graphs. We will examine the complications that arise with families of graphs and provide results for a few special cases. / Graduate

How do different methods employed by landscape architects impact the design outcome? This paper identifies and defines design methods in landscape architecture that may be classified as part of four internal and external connections and structures categories. Methods are further examined through two design exercises. In the first design exercise, the identified methods are individually applied to the same simple design which is used as a control. The only variable changed is the method used to design. The resulting designs are shown and analyzed. In the second design exercise, three different methods are applied to a complex design. Similar to the first design exercise, all variables are held constant except for the design methods. The resulting design outcomes are shown and analyzed. One conclusion from this work recommends landscape architecture designers use at least one method in each of four categories: 1) Modeling Systems, 2) Interrelationship and Dependencies, 3) Incorporation and Adadaption, and 4) Structure Problems in order to explore complex design issues more thoroughly. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Hadamard matrices are defined, and their basic properties outlined. A survey of historical and recent literature follows, in which a number of existence theorems are examined and given context. Finally, a new result for Hadamard matrices over $\Z_2$ is presented and given a graph-theoretic interpretation. / Master of Science

Motivated by the immature theoretical framework of design, this thesis employs transdisciplinary discourse to provide a contemporary and forward-looking model of design and design theory, as well as the linkages between the two, along with the necessary methodology. The discourse involves research into the current understanding of design, its principles, its practice and conceptual framework. The methodology developed and employed in this thesis can be outlined in five steps: 0. Design briefing 1. Developing a conceptual model based on the writings of Michel Foucault and Helmut Krippendorff. 2. Presenting the model in a written form. 3. Using accounts of conferences as tools for Designing Design and building monuments. 4. Interrogating the theory through an expert system. 5. Summarising and evaluating the findings. Design Briefing The present study delves into design, and into the design of theory. In Chapter A.1.6, a summary of Chapter A.0−A.1.5 is given, highlighting the underlying discourse. As shown, the theory behind this work is based on a hypothesis, which cannot be proved experimentally, or deduced from experimental data, at least at the time of its construction. Therefore, it needs to be understood that the case studies (A.3.2−A.3.5) in this thesis are not intended to serve as experiments that were conducted in order to prove the theory; rather, these case studies are design cases—products and artefacts—and should be viewed as discourse frameworks that can be adopted to design design. As described in Chapter 3.1, these are elements of monuments—in reference to Raichman (1988)—that have resulted from the discursive strategies and were designed within a community of designers, allowing the design understanding to be shaped. Methodologically, the theory is created through an indication of differences. These differences were elaborated on in the literature review, and can be explained using either logic-based or hermeneutical metaphors. As the latter approach is more flexible, it might be more applicable to the design environment. The generated knowledge can be located in three areas—design knowledge, epistemology, methodology (the process to get there), and phenomenology (the composition of the artefacts). While the main focus of this thesis has been on theory design, it was also important to delineate how to get there, as well as analyse the questionable differences between theory and practice, since they are ideal types that mark the extreme ends of a continuum (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p.36). The work presented in this thesis was conducted in a circular manner, like a design process, in order to encapsulate the instance. Therefore, essential topics reappear, allowing them to be reframed and newly contextualised. Chapter 0.0 to 0.7 reperesent the introductory part of this work. Thus, the content presented could be referred to as ‘the briefing’—as a parallel to a design case—to provide the background. It shows the motivation, a first hypothesis, some methodological considerations, and the research design and decisions. The aim is to provide insight into the phenomenon of interest and discuss some preconceptions. Thus, these introductory chapters provide orientation through locating some statements of the provided (design) discourse. Developing a conceptual model based on the writings of Michel Foucault and Helmut Krippendorff. As a follow up, Section A consists of several key components, and encompasses the research methodology specificity, its theoretical underpinning, and its connection to design, a reframing and contextualisation. This section also provides the means to overcome the discrepancy between researching and designing. Therefore, in Chapter A1−A1.6, a more substantial discourse of design is provided, along with the theory and the essential knowledge. Here, we can see the method in operation, as a patching of discursive statements—akin to an additive process of designing. Clearly, the attempt made here belongs to the constructivist epistemology, as the idea of design is a mental construct. Nonetheless, the aim is to provide a broad perspective of what can be presently observed in the design field. The employed methodology strategically aims to overcome the divide between designing and researching—between acting and reflecting—in order to provide a conceptual model. Still, it also makes the designing practice a conscious process, whereby theory is designed through discourse. Such discourse is revealed within the discovery of textual statements based on an extensive literature review, as well as through the discovery of textual statements from organised interactive conferences. The theory developed here is, in fact, a theory derived from theory, and is shaped through finding patterns and the simplification of the overall structure they form. In A.2, the concept of discourse and its designing quality is revealed. It shows how discourse, as the guiding method, is ‘excavated’ from the writings of Michel Foucault and Helmut Krippendorff. Methodologically, Michel Foucault’s ‘Archeology of Knowledge’ was analysed against and parallel to Helmut Krippendorff’s ‘Semantic Turn’, as these sources are complementary to each other. The goal of this process is a comparison of statements, yielding reasoning towards discourse and design discourse. In sum, this analysis helped reveal that it is a matter of design how the discourse is provided. The outcome of the aforementioned comparison is very interesting and satisfying. The findings revealed a difference in discourse, because engineering and design discourses are informed by rhetoric of design, rhetoric of deliberation, in opposite to humanistic discourse, which consumes textual objects (Perelman 1999). The discursive designing process within these chapters reveals some important elements, such as the conceptual frame of politics, referred to in Foucault’s discourse explorations. According to the author, power is a generating force in shaping discourse (Faucault 1980, p.119). In contrast, Krippendorff (1995b) sees power as emanating from language, which can be overcome through avoiding the construction of certain language. In the research presented, the designing practice that took place during the conferences, as well as the aforementioned notions, play a role, as was shown in Chapter 3. Power, as it was experienced, is unavoidable. Yet, rather than seeing it as a problem, it should be viewed as a generating force. A second more substantial question arises around the notion of discontinuity (A.2.3), which is essential in Foucault’s concept. According to Krippendorff, knowledge is not partitioned; it rather provides continuity through the various disciplines. As this research shows, this view should not be seen as an opposite to Foucault’s concept of discontinuity, because statements can refer to the same object, but coming from a discontinuous field, from various disciplines. In other words, as design discourse can be viewed as a discourse hosted by various disciplines, it is discontinuous! With respect to Foucault’s concern of grasping of statements, the main goal of this thesis is to provide support for this perspective. As the author noted, the grasping of the statements needs to follow the exact specificity of their occurrence (Foucault 1972). The prudence and success of dissociating statements from their original context to place them in a new context is questionable, since no discontinuity can be ignored (Foucault 1972). Often, rather than paraphrasing the text so that it reflects one’s own understanding of it, the result is a mere citation of the original texts and con-texts. The awareness of discontinuity does not allow for this thesis to be presented according to the positivistic paradigm.

QA bearing technologies Ltd. (hereafter QA) is a custom manufacturer of bearings in a variety of types and sizes. This research concerns one of the processes in QA’s bearing manufacturing in which the individual bearings, once assembled, are packaged to prevent corrosion and attack from any environmental influence. QA currently employs a manual process, which is time-consuming and significantly limits QA’s productivity. This greatly raises a need to improve this process through the design of an automated process for bearing packaging. Various kinds of packaging machine are available in the market for this application. However, most of them are designed for general packaging purpose and simply combining them may result in the functional overlap as applied to the packaging process. This research aims to design an automatic bearing packaging system (ABPS) based on an advanced design theory, i.e., Axiomatic Design Theory (ADT). In the first part of this research, a set of general functional requirements (FRs) and constraints (CONs) were defined specifically based on the needs from the customers. All FRs were maintained independent to each other such that the following design wouldn’t result in functional overlap. Then, design parameters (DPs) in general level were created to satisfy the defined FRs, each being a functionally independent subsystem consists of both custom-design components and products existing in the market. The second part of the research was to decompose the FRs and DPs based on independent axiom of ADT into further levels until the conceptual design was accomplished. In this process, acceptable alternatives in different hierarchies were proposed for comparison in the decision making process. Also, the relationship between FRs and DPs in the same level was always maintained one-to-one, which allows readily for modification in future, if needed. In the third part of this research, the information axiom of ADT was utilized to find the best solution from alternatives. For this, each alternative was evaluated in terms of the information content that reflects the possibility of satisfying the objective FR. The one with least information content was determined as the best alternative. As a result of this research, two solutions with different degree of automation were recommended for the bearing packaging system. The first solution is featured with higher degree of automation and capable of packaging bearings with limited human interface and as result, the total cost for its implementation is relatively high. The second solution integrates semi-automated machines and simplified sealing strategy and as such, the cost for its implementation is significantly reduced. After the conceptual design is complete, ADT is further applied in the detailed design level for oiling system with custom-designed components and mechanism. For the design of certain DPs, the design process applying ADT is used to compare with conventional methods, proved to be more efficient and simplified. Eventually, the final solution proposed for the detailed design of oiling system is consistent with independent axiom of ADT.

Decision-making is a fundamental process of human thinking and behavior. In engineering design, decision-making is studied from two different points of view: users and designers. User focused design studies tend to investigate ways to better inform the design process through the elicitation of preferences or information. Designer studies are broad in nature, but usually attempt to illustrate and understand some aspect of designer behavior, such as ideation, fixation, or collaboration. Despite their power, both qualitative and quantitative research methods are ultimately limited by the fact that they rely on direct input from the research participants themselves. This can be problematic, as individuals may not be able to accurately represent what they are truly thinking, feeling, or desiring at the time of the decision. A fundamental goal in both user- and designer-focused studies is to understand how the mind works while individuals are making decisions. This dissertation addresses these issues through the use of complementary behavioral and neuroimaging experiments, uncovering insights into how the mind processes design-related decision-making and the implications of those processes. To examine user decision-making, a visual conjoint analysis (preference modeling approach) was utilized for sustainable preference judgments. Here, a novel preference-modeling framework was employed, allowing for the real time calculation of dependent environmental impact metrics during individual choice decisions. However, in difficult moral and emotional decision-making scenarios, such as those involving sustainability, traditional methods of uncovering user preferences have proven to be inconclusive. To overcome these shortcomings, a neuroimaging approach was used. Specifically, study participants completed preference judgments for sustainable products inside of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Results indicated that theory of mind and moral reasoning processes occur during product evaluations involving sustainability. Designer decision-making was explored using an analogical reasoning and concept development experiment. First, a crowdsourcing method was used to obtain meaningful analogical stimuli, which were validated using a behavioral experiment. Following this, fMRI was used to uncover the neural mechanisms associated with analogical reasoning in design. Results demonstrated that analogies generally benefit designers; particularly after significant time on idea generation has taken place. Neuroimaging data helped to show two distinct brain activation networks based upon reasoning with and without analogies. We term these fixation driven external search and analogically driven internal search.. Fixation driven external search shows designers during impasse, as increased activation in brain regions associated with visual processing causes them to direct attention outward in search of inspiration. Conversely, during analogically driven internal search, significant areas of activation are observed in bilateral temporal and left parietal regions of the brain. These brain regions are significant, as prior research has linked them to semantic word-processing, directing attention to memory retrieval, and insight during problem solving. It is during analogically driven internal search that brain activity shows the most effective periods of ideation by participants.

The use of examples in idea generation is a common practice intended to provide inspiration from existing products to the designing of new ones. Examples can be taken from the Internet, engineering textbooks, analogical databases, literature, a company’s prior designs, or from a competitor company, prior work by the designer, and many other sources. These examples are represented in various ways, such as hand sketches, pictures, computer-aided designs (CAD), physical models, activity diagrams, shape grammars, text descriptions, etc. Design representations can also be broken down by function in the form of functional models and decompositions. The use of these visual or physical examples allows engineers to get a clearer picture of how a design or component works and enables them to have a better understanding of the overall design and function. Each representation has inherent advantages and disadvantages in the way that they portray a design. Examples are sources for analogies. Analogies from nature, where biological organisms have solved challenging problems in novel ways, are very useful in engineering idea generation and solution retrieval. This process is called biologically inspired design. Engineers often use biologically inspired design to solve problems while increasing creativity and expanding the solution space. Using this method, engineers are able to learn from nature and apply biological principles to real world engineering problems to make effective designs and produce innovative solutions. It is important to have a clearer understanding of how the use of the representations and characteristics of examples as external stimuli affect the idea generation process in engineering design. Understanding these processes will be invaluable in offering guidelines for how engineering design should be done and what types of external stimuli should be used to allow for innovation and creativity to be enhanced. This dissertation presents four studies that focus on understanding ways that examples can be used to improve the idea generation process. Three of these studies focus on how the representation of externally imposed examples, which may be used as analogues, influences creativity during idea generation while also minimizing design fixation, which occurs when designers adhere to the features of their own initial design solutions or to features of existing examples. The fourth study focuses on the use of examples as sources for analogical mapping and how these examples produce innovative solutions during idea generation. The first study compares CAD, sketch, and photograph representation presented individually. The second study compares CAD and sketch representation presented together, and the third study examines function tree and sketch representations. The fourth study looks at the real-world context and impact of examples used as sources for analogical mapping to inspire innovative solutions. The results of the studies show that CAD representations of good examples are effective in allowing engineers to identify the key working principles of a design and help to develop higher quality design concepts. CAD representations also cause more fixation to the example’s features. Function trees do not cause nor break fixation compared to a control condition, but do reduce fixation compared with sketches. Biological examples can be successfully used as analogues during engineering idea generation to create novel and effective design solutions to relevant and real-world engineering problems.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka olika gitarrtekniker samt min egen tekniska utveckling med tonvikt på metodik och progression. Studiens teoretiska perspektiv är designteori och dess frågeställningar lyder: Vilka resurser använder jag när jag övar på några specifikt utvalda gitarrtekniker? På vilka sätt kan jag använda dessa resurser i undervisning? Under 8 veckor fokuserade jag intensivt på min egen teknikutveckling och att övningen skulle vara kvalitativ. Jag använde mig av loggbok, metronom, video och uppsatta mål för att nå en teknisk utveckling. Resultatet presenteras med hjälp av två teman: Resurser för kvalitativ teknikövning och Resurser för undervisning i elgitarrteknik. Under dessa teman beskrivs hur tekniska tillkortakommanden synliggörs och hanteras samt hur jag kan använda denna kunskap för att bidra till en utveckling av elevers eventuella tekniska problem. I diskussionen beskrivs resurser för att öva teknik samt resurser för elevanalys. / The purpose of this study is to examine the different guitar techniques as well as my own technological development with emphasis on methodology and progression. The theoretical perspective is design theory and the research questions are: What resources do I use when practicing some specifically selected guitar techniques? How can I use these resources in teaching? During the eight weeks, I intensely focused on my own technology development using logbook, metronome and video, with the goal to achieve technological development. The results are presented by two themes: Resources for the qualitative technique training and Resources for the teaching of guitar technique. These themes describe how my own technical shortcomings become visible and managed and how I can use this kind of knowledge to contribute to the development of students' potential technical problems. The discussion describes the resources to practice techniques and resources for student analysis.

Reverse engineering is broadly defined as the process of analyzing existing products to learn how to create better products in the future. Including reverse engineering as part of the engineering design process can provide a number of benefits, including a more thorough understanding of existing products, lower cost for the redesign of products, and faster times to market. While reverse engineering can be applied to a wide range of domains, this thesis deals with methodologies for extracting technical data from electro-mechanical products for the purpose of recreating them functionally and dimensionally, to an acceptable level of accuracy. An integrated and evolved reverse engineering methodology is presented. This new methodology is built upon previous work, and results from an effort to integrate all previous methods into the simplest and most useful form. Five novel reverse engineering techniques are introduced to solve problems previously unaddressed in the literature: Bounding Pertinent Geometry, Reassembly by Function, Determining Sample Size, Estimating Production Volume and Accounting for Physical Degradation. Throughout the thesis, a running example of the reverse engineering of the Craftsman Auto Hammer is used to illustrate the application of the evolved methodology. / text

Bioinspired design uses biological systems to inspire engineering designs. One of bioinspired design’s challenges is identifying relevant information sources in biology for an engineering design task. Currently information can be retrieved by searching biology texts or journals using biology-focused keywords that map to engineering functions. However, this search technique can overwhelm designers with unusable results. This work explores the use of text classification tools to identify relevant biology passages for design. Further, this research examines the effects of using biology passages as stimuli during idea generation. Four human-subjects studies are examined in this work. Two surveys are performed in which participants evaluate sentences from a biology corpus and indicate whether each sentence prompts an idea for solving a specific design problem. The surveys are used to develop and evaluate text classification tools. Two idea generation studies are performed in which participants generate and record solutions for designing a corn shucker using either different sets of biology passages as design stimuli, or no stimuli. Based 286 sentences from the surveys, a k Nearest Neighbor classifier is developed that is able to identify helpful sentences relating to the function “separate” with a precision of 0.62 and recall of 0.48. This classifier could potentially double the number of helpful results found using a keyword search. The developed classifier is specific to the function “separate” and performs poorly when used for another function. Classifiers developed using all sentences and participant responses from the surveys are not able to reliably identify helpful sentences. From the idea generation studies, we determine that using any biology passages as design stimuli increases the quantity and variety of participant solutions. Solution quantity and variety are also significantly increased when biology passages are presented one at a time instead of all at once. Quality and variety are not significantly affected by the presence of design stimuli. Biological stimuli are also found to lead designers to types of solution that are not typically produced otherwise. This work develops a means for designers to find more useful information when searching biology and demonstrates several ways that biology passages can improve ideation.