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Nowadays, the social dimension of product sustainability is increasingly in demand, however, industrial designers struggle to pursue it much more than the environmental or economic one due to their unfamiliarity in correlating design choices with social impacts. In addition, this gap is not filled even by the supporting methods that have been conceived to only support specific areas of application. To fill this gap, this study proposed a method to support social failure mode and effect analysis (SFMEA), though the automatic failure determination, based on the use of a chatbot (i.e., an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chat). The method consists of 84 specific questions to ask the chatbot, resulting from the combination of known failures and social failures, elements from design theories, and syntactic structures. The starting hypothesis to be verified is that a GPT Chat (i.e., a common AI-based chat), properly queried, can provide all the main elements for the automatic compilation of a SFMEA (i.e., to determine the social failures). To do this, the proposed questions were tested in three case studies to extract all the failures and elements that express predefined SFMEA scenarios: a coffee cup provoking gender discrimination, a COVID mask denying a human right, and a thermometer undermining the cultural heritage of a community. The obtained results confirmed the starting hypothesis by showing the strengths and weaknesses of the obtained answers in relation to the following factors: the number and type of inputs (i.e., the failures) provided in the questions;the lexicon used in the question, favoring the use of technical terms derived from design theories and social sustainability taxonomies;the type of the problem. Through this test, the proposed method proved its ability to support the social sustainable design of different products and in different ways. However, a dutiful recommendation instead concerns the tool (i.e., the chatbot) due to its filters that limit some answers in which the designer tries to voluntarily hypothesize failures to explore their social consequences.
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At the onset of widespread COVID-19 in early 2020, institutions of higher education were abruptly faced with the need to rely on educational technology as a primary mode of teaching students, referred to as emergency remote teaching (ERT). Almost overnight, there was a corresponding and urgent need for instructional designer support and expertise. The realities of sudden, ubiquitous online educational delivery may have impacted the practice, practitioners, and future of instructional design in higher education. This dissertation is composed of three studies focused on instructional designers' experiences in higher education, before, during, and following the COVID-19- associated shift to ERT.With this dissertation as a whole and within each study individually, it is possible to begin to understand what it is like to be an instructional designer in higher education: what has changed for them since the height of the pandemic;what has not changed;and most importantly, what do they need as professionals and who can provide it for them?The first study is a literature review focused on identifying the roles, challenges, supports experienced by instructional designers in higher education as captured in scholarship from 2000-2020. The second study extends the body of research outlined in the first study by taking a participatory, qualitative approach to explore the challenges experienced by instructional designers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the supports they think can help them address these challenges. The third study presents a qualitative investigation focused on the future of instructional design in higher education as envisioned by instructional designers, including exploring their ideas of the agency they possess to influence that future. Together, the second and third studies aim to update and contextualize the findings of the first study in the current post-/pandemic era. These three studies, individually and together, illuminate instructional designers' experiences in higher education during what may ultimately prove to have been a tipping point for technology-supported education and the field of instructional design in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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PurposeThis paper aims to find a suitable structure for a practitioner's handbook that addresses the structural elements of the business continuity (BC) practice.Design/methodology/approachThe case study using the mixed method, quantitative with a questionnaire and conceptual research approach was what has been chosen. The four steps to the research process are outlined: one, choosing the topic, two, collecting relevant literature, three, identifying specific variables and four, generating a structure. The design brought on by years of experience, should be put into an organised system and handbook that can be reused, without having to reinvent the wheel.FindingsA BC handbook should be as relevant to the executives and management as to their employees. By adopting a BC practice in a government department, state-owned entity, agency or municipality. Assurance will be ascertained for reliable, improved service delivery and reputation with much less interruption. Therefore a handbook with a "cradle to the grave” BC approach should outline, with examples of standards, awareness, policy, BC programme plan, BC structures, business impact and risk analysis, strategy, budgets, scorecards, monitoring and evaluation, recovery and BC plans, together with the audit and an International Standards Organization (ISO) 22301 certification process.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to literature, questionnaires and identified variables pertaining to BC management (BCM) in the South African Government.Practical implicationsThe implications of the case study is that out of the variables identified and the relevant literature and standards, a structure for a relevant post-COVID-19 government practitioner's handbook could be made available.Social implicationsThe use of a BCM handbook for government would assist in the continuation of services through manmade and natural disasters. The service to the citizen, including but not limited to water, electricity, sanitation, medical and health services, and the food supply chain are just a few areas that can be positively impacted upon by good BCM. By implication the reliance of government structure are treated most in time of disasters as experienced through the two year period of the COVID-19 pandemic.Originality/valueThe government departments in South Africa do not have or have not implemented BCM due to the lack of clear guidelines. The COVID-19 pandemic however had accelerated the requirement for a top down BCM approach. To ensure that the scope of BCM is not limited, the possibility of having a set handbook for the government practitioner will ensure that service quality remains intact. Such a handbook related to government BCM practice is long outstanding.
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Montclair State University (MSU) is New Jerseys second-largest public institution. As online education continues its rapid-paced growth, MBA programs have been some of the most common online degrees. In 2016, Montclairs Feliciano School of Business entered this crowded online MBA market. After a false start and sometimes rocky development, the online MBA was successfully launched in the fall of 2016. The program grew so fast that the leadership team needed to find innovative ways to handle the number of students. The lessons learned by the online MBA leadership team are detailed below.
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Co-design is seen as crucial for designing solutions for resource-constrained people living in developing countries. To best understand their needs, user engagement and co-design strategies need to first be developed. In this Design Practice Brief, a process of co-design was created and used to understand ways telecommunication engineers could engage with rural communities in Uganda. It reports and reflects on (i) the experience of co-designing with nondesigners and (ii) creating a co-design structure and developing co-design methods of engaging with community members living in developing countries. In doing so, it offers a format and case study for future practitioners facilitating and conducting co-design with nondesigners and contributes to a knowledge gap in the reporting and reflection of co-design practice. This case study is unique as the co-design practice was achieved remotely (online), crossed disciplines (designers and telecommunication engineers) and cultural boundaries (European and African). It finds that in co-designing with nondesigners, preparation and structure are key, with acknowledgement and management of cultural and discipline differences.
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PurposeHumane entrepreneurship (HumEnt) has been theoretically proposed as a new model of entrepreneurship supporting the idea of an enlarged entrepreneurial strategic posture. The aim of paper is to frame humane entrepreneurial orientation's (HEO) characteristics by showing how firms apply the HumEnt approach, and to offer suggestions to build an HEO measurement scale.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a case study approach, focusing on five Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs).FindingsThe study (1) identifies which are the characteristics of HEO strategic posture in the enterprises under examination;(2) shows that entrepreneurs' personal values and credos are fundamental to having an HEO strategic posture adopted;(3) provides indications on the development of a measurement scale through a discussion of emerging HEO themes.Originality/valueThe value of the study is that emerging themes of HEO strategic posture was derived from the analysis of five Italian SMEs. Entrepreneur's personal values have been proven to be relevant in the implementation of HEO. Based on the emerging HEO themes, the study contributes to the literature opening the way toward the building of an all-encompassing HEO measurement scale.
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Despite the anecdotal evidence that construction women workforces have faced difficulties in accessing adequate and properly fitting personal protective equipment (PPE), there have been very few studies addressing their experiences and satisfaction with PPE. This study aimed to provide an overview of women workforces' satisfaction with PPE in the Australian construction industry. The specific research objectives were to: (i) examine their satisfaction regarding the functional, expressive and aesthetic (FEA) need attributes of PPE and (ii) investigate factors affecting their overall satisfaction with PPE. Data were collected using an online questionnaire survey. The results indicated a rather low satisfaction level among the respondents for all the thirteen FEA need attributes of their PPE. A regression model showed that their overall satisfaction with PPE was significantly affected by their experiences of PPE use (i.e., the need for alterations or adjustments to PPE, adequacy of training for PPE use, the perceived impact of ill-fitting PPE on work productivity) and satisfaction with FEA need attributes but not their demographical factors. The research findings call for action among construction training organizations, PPE designers and manufacturers and construction employers to recognise and address the low satisfaction level for PPE use among women workforces in the industry.
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PurposeTo offer an insight into post-COVID-19 Industry 5.0 environment, educational responses that are being made by Higher Education institutions (HEIs), and leadership qualities that appear to be effective in this environment. Also, to develop a conceptual model of causal relationships between the identified constructs in producing educational curricular outcomes.Design/methodology/approachInterpretative review was conducted identifying, analyzing and synthesizing the relevant literature on the relationships between post-COVID-19 Industry 5.0 environment, HEI's leadership characteristics, their decision-making bases and curricular design outcomes.FindingsThe literature showed that in unpredictable post-COVID-19 Industry 5.0 environment, thriving HEIs are found to have leaders who are perceptive, visionary and agile with effective communication and navigation skills;embracing change culture;and able to learn from concrete experiences. Responding to the pandemic and Industry 5.0's disruptive technology, these leaders are accelerating university–industry engagement and developing more flexible, student-centered, work-based curricula. Synthesis of the literature resulted in developing a conceptual model that shows that environmental turbulence is likely to influence curriculum design through leaders' decision bases, and that leaders' characteristics and industry engagement may interact with leaders' decision bases to strengthen this influence.Originality/valueA different lens was offered of the type of leadership that is seen to be effective in the turbulent and HE post-COVID-19 Industry 5.0 environment, and a novel conceptual model of relationships was developed which has potential impacts for HE leadership theory and practice.
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When entry-level designers transition into the workplace, new responsibilities and adjustments to organizational procedures may cause uncertainty, even prior to COVID-19. Studies have shown that positive mentorship relationships can help newer protégés advance in their professional and individual career goals. This study employed a mixed-methods survey to understand the mentorship opportunities available to emerging designers and the impact of remote work on these dynamics. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed from eighty-five respondents using Ragins and McFarlin's RMMRI instrument. Participants reported an average of 1.84 formal mentors and 4.01 informal mentors, which were significantly positively associated with overall average mentor role scores. Participants indicated that they were most likely to receive individual categories of "acceptor” and "friend.” Yet, contextual factors (i.e., firm size and market sector) did not significantly influence mentor roles. Further, those from underrepresented groups scored "acceptor” significantly worse than their counterparts, yet they did not score mentor quality significantly differently. Qualitative insights indicated "coaching,” "acceptance,” and "counselor” were the primary mentor roles received by the participants. Other quantitative findings revealed that remote work had little impact on mentorship perceptions during COVID-19. Together, these findings help build understanding surrounding mentorship in design praxis.
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This paper examines the use of augmented reality technology in the design of packaging for takeaway food to assist in marketing. The research is divided into three studies for progressive investigation and analysis. Study 1 collected 375,859 negative evaluations of food delivery from the Internet and explored the main reasons that may have impacted the user's evaluation by Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling. Study 2 evaluated the effectiveness of augmented reality packaging by surveying 165 subjects and comparing it with traditional packaging. We conducted a survey of 1603 subjects in Study 3 and used the technology incentive model (TIM) to analyze how augmented reality technology positively impacts food delivery marketing. It has been established that packaging will influence the negative perception of consumers about buying and eating takeout food. Specifically, augmented reality technology can improve negative evaluations by providing a more conducive user experience than traditional packaging. According to our findings, augmented reality technology has improved the consumers' perception of interaction, perceived vividness, and novelty experience, and achieved the aim of promoting takeaway food retail by improving negative evaluations posted by users.
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PurposeDue to the introduction of new vaccines in the child immunization program and inefficient vaccine supply chain (VSC), the universal immunization program (UIP), India is struggling to provide a full schedule of vaccination to the targeted children. In this paper, the authors investigate the critical factors for improving the performance of the existing VSC system by implementing the next-generation vaccine supply chain (NGVSC) in India.Design/methodology/approachThe authors design a fuzzy multi-criteria framework using a fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) and fuzzy multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis (FMOORA) to identify and analyze the critical barriers and enablers for the implementation of NGVSC. Further, the authors carry out a numerical simulation to validate the model.FindingsThe outcome of the analysis contends that demand forecasting is the topmost supply chain barrier and sustainable financing is the most important/critical enabler to facilitate the implementation of the NGVSC. In addition, the simulation reveals that the results of the study are reliable.Social implicationsThe findings of the study can be useful for the child immunization policymakers of India and other developing countries to design appropriate strategies for improving existing VSC performance by implementing the NGVSC.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, the study is the first empirical study to propose the improvement of VSC performance by designing the NGVSC.
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The purpose of this paper was to investigate the emerging changes in Russian premium fashion brand consumers' behavior on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic and international economic sanctions, the impact on foreign fashion brands' decisions to leave the market, and the willingness of some Russian fashion designers to scale their businesses and occupy vacated market niches. This problem had arisen for the first time;the situation is unexpected and unique. Therefore, the researchers combined multiple methods of data collection: (1) Observation;(2) Netnography to identify emerging changes in Russian consumers' behavior, which increases the objectivity of the data obtained since personal contact was excluded;and (3) Expert in-depth interviews to assess the situation by Russian fashion designers. QDA and qualitative content analysis were used. Fashion designers in Russia percept the situation as an opportunity for business development, similar to the situation that occurred in Iran, but entrepreneurs understand the market risks and expect more serious measures of state support for business. The results may inform state policymakers and stakeholders about the stated changes in consumer behavior and the capabilities of Russian entrepreneurs to scale the business, which will help identify possible growth vectors for domestic fashion designers in the premium sector. © 2023 Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Nowadays, designers deal with increasingly complex and meaningful challenges. Because of that, design schools are required to deliver professional designers capable of handling what future decades might bring. Therefore, resilience, generally described as the process of adapting well in the presence of adversity, makes it a valuable quality future generations of designers could develop. As resilience is still an concept within the education domain, this MSc graduation project aimed to explore how it could be built and enhanced in such context. The approach chosen to tackle that question was initially to analyse the literature regarding resilience. Then, to perform an in-depth autoethnographic study in a moment resilience was systematically present in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering: the COVID19 lockdowns. Finally, the learnings from that period and previous literature research were synthesized into a theoretical framework that aims to assist educators in conceptualizing interventions to foster resilience in learning systems. This framework was implemented to design and evaluate My Rubric, a co-creative guide for adaptive assessment, which aims to offer a constructive and resilient alternative to the current rubric. © Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Disrupt, Innovate, Regenerate and Transform, E and PDE 2022. All rights reserved.
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The COVID-19 pandemic emphasised the need for decision-support tools to assist urban designers in building resilient and smart cities. Therefore, a multi-disciplinary systematic review was conducted following the PRISMA guideline to identify papers relevant for selecting appropriate methodologies that can be applied to build decision-support tools for resilient cities. This paper presents a list of 109 key references, selected from 8,737 records found from the searches, and identified major research themes, fundamental design interventions, and computer modelling techniques. We extracted six groups of interventions categorised by different scales of action: from an individual, crowds (social distancing and travel-related interventions), to a building, a neighbourhood/district, and a city. In addition, there are three sorts of computational modelling approaches, i.e., computer simulation, statistical models, and AI algorithms. Most of the studies developed models for predictive purposes, and 28% of the modelling studies built models for descriptive purposes. This work intends to empower urban designers and planners to overcome and get prepared for unpredictable disasters in pursuit of resilient and smart cities, particularly in the post-pandemic world. This review enables them to quickly find relevant papers as well as suitable methodologies and tools for a particular research purpose. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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With the development of instructional design literature and the potential of online courses to support learning, there exists a gap between theoretical knowledge (theory) and practice (reality). The objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of the design of online courses for teaching and learning, and what designers and instructors in online learning environments should collectively consider in terms of the quality of the design for online courses. A quantitative design methodology was used to measure the validity and reliability of a rubric used as an evaluation tool in three online short courses at a university level. Scores were measured and analysed using simple descriptive statistics, and qualitative aspects of the online course analysis were integrated to ascertain a summative conclusion of the three online courses and whether the rubric, as a design framework, needed further improvement or not. The rubric offered a framework to determine what components contribute towards quality design in online courses.
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Since time immemorial, shopping malls have served as potential havens for establishing symbiotic relationships between often multiple individual communities and their corresponding consumers, all under a single roof. These installments with ground-breaking architecture coupled with a multitude of amenities have inconspicuously managed to generate an ambience and long served as a beacon for these local communities. Today, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to a commercial standstill, the economics of malls continue to collapse. This article details the creation of OASIS, a collaborative virtual reality project designed for mental rehabilitation, which examines the themes of destruction, growth, sustainability, and mindfulness using the metaphor of a desolated shopping mall. Ten individual virtual spaces within OASIS were developed to encourage participants’ engagement in a virtual environment and to alleviate the impact of social isolation during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This collaborative project developed at the University of Illinois Chicago involved a team of ten designers from Industrial Design and Graphic Design programs in the integrated virtual creative production. OASIS was developed in a remote collaboration using the Unity game engine and other collaboration tools enabling virtual teamwork. In this article, OASIS is situated within a discussion of how virtual design collaboration can help mitigate issues related to isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. Qualitative feedback from designers and audiences confirmed the effectiveness of virtual reality as a tool on individual and collective creative experience. Exhibited in an online gallery, OASIS explores how design methodologies and VR technology can enhance the graphic design curriculum.
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The research was designed to contribute to scientific efforts in exploring the attitude of fashion stakeholders towards AI and its use in attaining sustainability in fashion industry. Although the role of AI in Fashion has been studied before, the aim of this research is to challenge and analyze the attitudes towards sustainable fashion of both stakeholders and consumers. The research considers the views of consumers, industry professionals and company shareholders on the role AI plays in pursuing ideas of Sustainable Fashion. Contrary to expectations, the companies with significant turnover did not show any greater awareness of the new trends in the fashion business. Furthermore, previous familiarity with the usage of AI did not prove to promote openness towards the recommendation of apps which use AI to promote Sustainable Fashion. The value of this research lies in the findings, which help provide a framework which can be used to change the viewpoint of the key market players. The crucial finding is that the AI approach on sustainability will influence both users (changing their purchasing decisions toward more sustainable choices if provided with a set of information on ecological impact, production choices), and corporate businesses (changing the overall business strategy, planning, marketing communication and production designs). The paper offers milestones for further research on synergies between AI, fashion industry lined with UNS SDGs and purchasing behavior.
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Educational games have been employed among Omani schools but those used by local Omani schools were imported and were mostly designed based on western contexts. For Omani children, these games may be culturally inappropriate and difficult to comprehend and follow, impeding children’s learning. Three questionnaires and one observational checklist were used to gather data from 40 respondents (observers). SPSS was used in data analysis. Through experiments, the behavior of Omani students towards the use of imported educational games was examined. Five main factors, namely, efficiency, learnability, memorability, errors, and satisfaction, of educational games for a target user were measured using Hybrid User Evaluation Methodology for Remote Evaluation (HUEMRE), Training Framework for Untrained Observer (TFUO), and Framework on Educational Games Behavior Intention (EGsBI), which are specifically designed frameworks for this purpose. The results of this study explained that the Omani children are facing difficulties in using the imported educational games;furthermore, this study proves that culture, language, animation, and interaction are contributing heavily to benefiting from educational games, and, therefore, these factors shall be highly considered in the process of educational games design to facilitate and ensure children learning;furthermore, the findings of this study enrich the comprehension of how the specified factors positively affect behavioral intention of Omani students in the use of educational games and in improving the behavior intention level of these students.
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Dealing with fashion multimedia big data with Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms has become an appealing challenge for computer scientists, since it can serve as inspiration for fashion designers and can also allow to predict the next trendy items in the fashion industry. Moreover, with the global spread of COVID-19 pandemic, social media contents have achieved an increasingly crucial factor in driving retail purchase decisions, thus it has become mandatory for fashion brand analysing social media pictures. In this light, this paper aims at presenting StyleTrendGAN, a novel custom deep learning framework that has the ability to generate fashion items. StyleTrendGAN combines a Dense Extreme Inception Network (DexiNed) for sketches extraction and Pix2Pix for the transformation of the input sketches into the new handbag models. StyleTrendGAN increases the efficiency and accuracy of the creation of new fashion models compared to previous ones and to the classic human approach;it aims to stimulate the creativity of designers and the visualization of the results of a production process without actually putting it into practice. The approach was applied and tested on a newly collected dataset, “MADAME” (iMage fAshion Dataset sociAl MEdia) of images collected from Instagram. The experiments yield high accuracy, demonstrating the effectiveness and suitability of the proposed approach. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.