Industrial Design

Abstract：In the recent several years, innovation spirit has reached top in the list of "the necessary core quality" in almost all kinds of company. The design team has also substituted for individual, becomes the main construction form in product design department. Innovation product design team will certainly become the new work form tendency, both in the common design department and in product design specialty in colleges and universities.

Nowadays, business globalization, complex consumer requirements, and high technology development have led to vigorous business competition and market uncertainty. In new product design, it is increasingly important to put more emphasis on innovative concerns than quality and speed of production. Providing unique, innovative and value-added products becomes a crucial strategy for success. This study aims to develop a new product design process that concentrates on radical innovations. Visioning thinking, TRIZ, Image Scale, and Morphological Analysis are integrated for developing designs with a balance of rational/logical analyses and intuitive/creative thinking. The proposed process fulfills the need for radical innovation through enriching heuristic thinking. It is a useful methodology that adds value to products in terms of technological functions, form perceptions, and holistic usability. A proposal of therapy bike design for cerebral palsy children is demonstrated using the new process. Through case demonstration, designers could enhance products with human-centered values while coping with market uncertainty effectively. The applicability of the vision-oriented approach for innovative product design is verified.

The commercial success or failure of a product doesn't rest solely on the whims of the marketplace. The myriad, often interdependent, strategic trade-offs made throughout the product development process go a long way toward determining whether a product succeeds or fails. The key to success often rests in finding the right combination of product design and market choice decisions.Toward that end, William E. Souder and X. Michael Song examine the relationship between product success and several product design and market choice strategies. In particular, they explore the possibility that the correct strategy combination differs depending on a firm's perception of market uncertainty, which they measure in terms of the respondents' perceived familiarity with the market for a product, perceived understanding of customer needs, and perceived capability to translate those needs into product performance specifications. Recognizing that the correct combination of strategic choices may also depend on firm size, industry, and culture, the study focuses on small U.S. suppliers of electronics components. Fortune 500 producers of electronics final products, and Japanese producers of electronics final products.For the small U.S. firms in the study, an emphasis on performance superiority, technical superiority, or radically new products provides a recipe for failure under low market uncertainty. Even under high market uncertainty, these characteristics do not equate to success for the small U.S. firms in this study. The findings suggest that these firms should focus on design compatibility with a purchaser's installed base. The responses from Fortune 500 firms and Japanese companies indicate that under low market uncertainty these larger organizations should consider emphasizing compatibility and avoiding radical designs. For markets that the larger firms perceive to be highly uncertain, the results suggest that these companies should emphasize performance superiority, technical superiority, and radical designs.The findings related to market choice strategies also support the notion that the correct combination of strategic decisions depends on firm size, culture, and the perceived level of market uncertainty. However, the guidelines presented in this study should not be construed as hard-and-fast rules for formulating product strategy. Instead, the results presented here will be helpful for challenging assumptions and guiding actions, as one element in the effort to shape an effective product strategy.

The effects of five new different handle shapes on hand performance capabilities, usability and discomfort, and also the relationship between these variables were evaluated in the context of masonry work and using masons’ trowels as an exemplar hand tool. The prototype handles were designed to provide different patterns of grip so that they could be suited to the hand/tool interaction in particular hand areas. The results showed significant effect of tool handle shape on the hand grip effort, usability, and hand and finger discomfort assessments, but not on the time to complete the masonry task. The hand grip effort and usability were negatively correlated with subjective assessment of hand and finger discomfort, so that a lower level of hand and finger discomfort corresponded to higher hand grip exertion and usability. These findings provide a better insight into the performance and usability issues when using hand tools which can be applied by tool manufacturers to improve industrial hand tool design.

BACKGROUND: The traditional design of fabric cutting scissors frequently causes excessive ulnar deviation of the wrist which, together with repetitive and long-term use of the tool, may contribute to the development of musculoskeletal problems, particularly in the upper extremities. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare a new bent-handle fabric scissors with a traditional one. METHODS: The study investigated the effects of a new bent-handle fabric scissors on several hand performance capabilities (hand dexterity, pinch grip strength, wrist postures and hand/finger discomfort) and tool's usability (using System Usability Scale – SUS) and compared it against the effects of traditional design. RESULTS: The results indicated that the bent-handle fabric scissors was superior to the traditional design as it resulted in more neutral wrist deviation, higher usability scores and less hand/finger discomfort ratings. No significant difference was found between the two designs with regard to the hand dexterity and strength exertions. CONCLUSIONS: The findings provide evidence that the ergonomic principle of " bending the tool, not the wrist " can perhaps be employed advantageously for the design of fabric cutting scissors to reduce wrist deviations and discomfort and to improve the tool's usability.

Controversies are an inseparable part of social systems which, if constructed properly, can create a unique condition for higher-order learning. In addition, design inquiry, as a process of thought and planning, is also a constructive process. This provokes the question of how to construct controversies from a designerly perspective in order to steer higher-order learning. This paper presents a theoretical contribution to the field of social system design by providing the first insights into design intervention to facilitate a network of allied construction. Through a systematic review of the concept of conflict and disagreement, the link between controversies and knowledge transmission is examined in order to highlight the benefit of controversies in a constructive way. Next to that, the essential steps for constructing a network of allies are proposed. These steps are compared with specific aspects of design in order to unfold the advantages of design for network construction. Finally, the paper wraps up with concluding remarks about the necessity of having a bridging step from theory to action in order to facilitate the construction of controversies in a real-life context.

Transformability is one of the essential attributes of social systems. To improve transformability, one should create the preconditions for strategic intervention on the underlying social structures. This paper proposes a design-driven conflict (DDC) methodology in response to the limitation of the systemic design approach by aggregating a network of allies essential for the paradigmatic shifts. The proposed methodology has more strategic implications. It starts with unfolding the actors and shared resources (phase one context mapping). It continues with defining the power relations between them, drivers, and spillovers that cause conflicts and disagreements (phase two analysis). After this, it shows how one can synthesize the commonalities and the core narratives of actors in the form of boundary objects (phase three synthesis). By using the existing narratives and the commonalities between actors as inputs for the translation phase, DDC creates the preconditions for a network of allies construction. Next, the methodology uses translation as a method, in relation to the four moments of a ‘sociology of translation’, problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization, in order to gradually change the learning paradigm of the system. In the scaling-up phase (phase five), DDC proposes ways of creating a narrative platform, shedding light on how to mobilize the results of translation from the community level onto a broader social scale. The framework for the design methodology has been evaluated based on a method content analysis and by a group of experts from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. The results show, except for the efficiency of the method, which requires additional investigation in a real-life context, the efficacy and effectiveness of the method have been elaborated in a sufficient way.