Design-as-a-Service Framework for Enabling Innovations in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Modern manufacturing enterprises must be agile to cope with sudden demand changes arising from increased global competition, geopolitical factors, and unforeseen circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector lack agility due to lower penetration of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT), the inability to employ highly skilled human capital, and the absence of a formal innovation ecosystem for new products or solutions. In recent years, Cloud-based Design and Manufacturing (CBDM) has emerged as an enabler for product realization by integrating various service-based models. However, the existing framework does not thoroughly support the innovation ecosystem from concept to product realization by formally addressing economic challenges and human skillset requirements. The present work considers the augmentation of the Design-as-a-Service (DaaS) model into the existing CBDM framework for enabling systematic product innovations. The DaaS model proposes to connect skilled human resources with enterprises interested in transforming an idea into a product or solution through the CBDM framework. The model presents an approach for integrating human resources with various CBDM elements and end-users through a service-based model. The challenges associated with successfully implementing the proposed model are also discussed. It is established that the DaaS has the potential for rapid and economical product discovery and can be readily accessible to SMEs or independent individuals. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Mechanical Design is the property of American Society of Mechanical Engineers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Supporting Remote Social Robot Design Collaboration with Online Canvases: Lessons Learned from Facilitators' and Participants' Experiences.

Social robot design projects typically involve multidisciplinary teamwork and collaboration, adopt a Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach, and deal with physical (tangible) objects, i.e., robots. HCD takes a human to the centre point of the design process. A typical activity in HCD are design workshops where a facilitator is needed to guide and moderate the task-related and interactional activities throughout the session. Facilitation is also usually needed in longer-term design projects or courses to guide participants through the different phases of design during several sessions. Recently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most design activities including social robot design were rapidly transferred to online mode. Designing for tangible objects is challenging in online settings because the interaction experience with a physical object is hard to demonstrate online. In this article, we report how we harnessed online canvases to support both short-term social robot design workshops and a long-term design course. Based on participants' feedback and facilitators' experiences, we report lessons learned from utilizing collaborative design canvases for creative social robot design projects that specifically focus on early stages and concept ideation. We propose practical guidelines for canvas-based online facilitation focusing on creative design workshops and projects. In addition, we discuss the lessons learned concerning social robot design activities taking place in online mode. To respond to the challenges of designing tangible robots in a fully online mode, we suggest a Hybrid Robotic Design Model (HRDM), where the participants work in contact with facilitators, other participants and robots at specific points, while the other phases are conducted online.

Teacher learning through collaborative curriculum design in the midst of a pandemic: A cultural historical activity theory investigation

Collaborative design, or co-design, is an effective form of professional development that promotes teacher learning. In this study, we used cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to investigate how teachers attempt to resolve systematic contradictions as they co-designed and enacted a four-week science unit on COVID-19. Our findings indicated that the teachers faced significant challenges in implementing the COVID-19 unit. We also found that tensions among teachers and positioning teachers as the ultimate decision-makers were particularly useful for promoting teacher learning in the midst of a pandemic. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Care and Complexity: Designing for Holistic Understandings of and within a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic spans multiple systems and dimensions - social, scientific, emotional, and axiological. This paper describes the collaborative design process of an elementary-age program addressing COVID-19, systems thinking, and photography from this multi-dimensional perspective. With the COVID-19 pandemic as both curricular content and design context, an educational design emerged that includes care as the centerpiece of both design structure and process. Using an ethnographic approach, we outline the evolution of the curricular theme - from relationships, to protection, to care - and how this theme is realized in our design. Through a perspective of care, we consider what it means to include socio-emotional elements in systems thinking, specifically axiological considerations. This paper contributes to the need for educational designs that consider COVID-19 from multiple dimensions, to understandings of how collaborative processes can shape design, and to (re)theorizations of systems thinking in the learning sciences. © ISLS.

USING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR COLLABORATIVE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Since the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic outbreak, and the requirement to 'stay at home' and 'work from home', we, as a collaborative species have been forced to find ways of computer-supported collaboration. Going beyond global design and distributed design. We now find ourselves as a human race, not with a desire to collaborate using computers, or with a requirement, but it is now a necessity. In many ways, a paradigm shift has occurred. This research investigates the use of novel technology to support student teams in the conceptual design phase of an engineering design project. A review of published literature identified a lack of understanding in the impact that a digital distributed environment can have on the outcomes of a collaborative ideation task. The literature suggested there would be little to no change between working in a collocated and digital distributed environment. An experiment was designed that asked 16 participants working in pairs to complete an ideation task in both a synchronous traditional collocated environment and a synchronous digital distributed environment. The results from the experiment suggest that conducting the ideation task within a digital environment has a negative effect on the outcomes of the ideation task. © Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Disrupt, Innovate, Regenerate and Transform, E and PDE 2022. All rights reserved.

Teacher learning through collaborative curriculum design in the midst of a pandemic: A cultural historical activity theory investigation

Collaborative design, or co-design, is an effective form of professional development that promotes teacher learning. In this study, we used cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to investigate how teachers attempt to resolve systematic contradictions as they co-designed and enacted a four-week science unit on COVID-19. Our findings indicated that the teachers faced significant challenges in implementing the COVID-19 unit. We also found that tensions among teachers and positioning teachers as the ultimate decision-makers were particularly useful for promoting teacher learning in the midst of a pandemic.

User-centered Exploration of Robot Design for Hospitals in COVID-19 Pandemic

In order to prevent COVID-19 infection in the hospital environment, the medical staff is handling many treatments for patients non face-to-face, which reduces the efficiency of medical services. Robots may enable smooth non face-to-face interactions between medical staff and patients by providing cognitive and physical support to the medical staff. In this paper, we identified the medical staff's pain points and needs about the robots which would help them. In addition, researchers and medical staff together participated in generating the design concept of a robot needed in times of COVID-19 as design participants. We conducted qualitative interviews about robots with nurses working in a negative pressure isolation room (NPIR) where patients with COVID-19 are isolated while treatment. As a result, the needs for supporting increased workload including inventory monitoring, waste management, meal delivery, and medicine delivery as well as supporting communication in emergency including communication in patient's emergency and communication in medical staff's emergency were discovered. Based on the findings from the interview, we proposed a robot design concept that can satisfy medical staff's need in NPIR. © 2022 IEEE.

Blended and (not so) splendid teaching and learning: Higher education insights from university teachers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This paper provides deep insights and reflections by a group of teachers on the redesign of three postgraduate university courses in tourism management to a blended format during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others, we faced the common struggle of 'what' and 'how' to blend in uncommon circumstances whilst staying committed to maintaining excellent teaching and own wellbeing. To account for crucial nuances that normally are discarded in debates on higher education teaching and learning, our paper incorporates the author-teachers' emic, insider perspectives on extant realities. Through snippets of our shared, reflective logbook, we reveal the cognitive, affective and conative dimensions of teachers' experiences, while our findings point to the collaborative opportunities that come with managerial challenges during a transition to blended teaching. Based on our findings, we argue that collaborative redesign with, not for others is of paramount importance when transitioning higher education to blended and splendid teaching and learning.

Design Education in Post-pandemic Age: Examining the Roles Digital Platforms Play in Collaborative Design Activities

Due to the experimental and collaborative nature of design activities, studio-based teaching and learning have always been a central part of design education. It is perceived that knowledge is primarily obtained through the act of designing, which encompasses not only verbal conversation with other humans but also real-time material interactions with each person’s physical environment. However, since the global COVID-19 pandemic, design students, educators, and institutions around the world have had to quickly adapt to working and collaborating on digital platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Team, etc. At the same time, there has been a lack of understanding of what these digital platforms can do in collaborative design activities. The study presented in this article aims at exploring the effects of digital platforms on real-time collaborative design activities with a focus on object handling and communication, which are key elements of studio-based interactions. The participant in this study was invited to finish a small collaborative task which entailed building a paper toy with the researcher on Microsoft Teams. It was discovered that apart from facilitating the communication between the participant and the researcher, the digital platform was continuously regionalising, de-regionalising, and re-regionalising the space in the rooms the researcher and participant were working in. This characteristic of the digital platform opens new doorways to studying the roles technologies play in design education that embraces the contextual nature of pedagogical practices in the changing environment of the 21st century. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Virtual and Face-to-Face Team Collaboration Comparison Through an Agent-Based Simulation

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the acceptance of virtual team collaboration as a replacement for face-to-face collaboration. Unlike face-to-face collaboration, virtual collaboration is influenced by unique factors, such as technology mediation. However, there is a lack of rigorous research that assesses the impact of virtual collaboration on the engineering design process. Therefore, the current study investigates the effect of virtual team collaboration on design outcomes by means of the model of influence, learning, and norms in organizations (MILANO) framework. To tailor MILANO for virtual collaboration, this paper first presents an empirical study of human design teams, which shows how model parameter values for face-to-face collaboration (like self-efficacy, perceived influencers, perceived degree of influence, trust and familiarity) differ from appropriate parameter values for face-to-face collaboration. The simulation results for both virtual and face-to-face collaboration show how design outcomes differ with collaboration mode. Unlike teams with a few well-defined influential individuals, the mode of collaboration does not have a significant impact on teams where all individuals are equally influential. Virtual collaboration also results in lower exploration and variety than face-to-face collaboration.

Employing Mozilla Hubs as an Alternative Tool for Student Outreach: A Design Challenge Use Case

Due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, online virtual gathering platforms have risen at all levels as alternatives to traditional videoconferencing. The implementation of physical distancing and limited capacity implemented to reduce the spread of COVID-19 changed how academic activities are conducted. For example, student outreach presents students with experiential learning opportunities and teamwork on campus. While video conferencing tools have thrived over the pandemic, these lack immersion and presence, lead to fatigue, and lack engagement. In this paper, we present the development and hosting of a Design Challenge employing the open-source virtual reality (VR) platform, Hubs by Mozilla. Usability perceptions from five out of ten participants were gathered and analyzed employing a simplified version of the System Usability Scale questionnaire. The process of developing the Mozilla Hubs environment allowed us to identify technical issues associated with performance and audio quality. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Digitalization, Participation and Interaction: Towards More Inclusive Tools in Urban Design—A Literature Review

The 11th sustainable development goal highlights the importance of making our cities more inclusive. For that, planning processes should become more engaging and empower citizens to actively participate in designing their environments. However, the COVID-19 crisis exposed inequalities and posed challenges to communal activities due to restrictions on face-to-face activities. These constraints brought many researchers and practitioners to rethink the process of co-designing workshops, putting digitalization in the spotlight. The present study consists of a systematic literature review focusing on understanding how digital technologies affect participatory approaches in urban design and how they have evolved since the 1990s. Also, it investigates the correlation between levels of participation and interaction in different types of collaborative design workshops held in communities. We found that many authors have been developing new methodologies and digital tools aiming to digitalize the co-designing experience through mediation. However, there is no evolutionary evidence of tools in the field creating bridges between digitalization, participation, and interaction. We argue that a research agenda is required to produce more sophisticated tools to tackle social barriers and support inclusive design towards sustainable urban development patterns.

Enhancing Students’ Competency and Learning Experience in Structural Engineering through Collaborative Building Design Practices

The field of the built environment is evolving, whereby the involvement of a multi-disciplinary team in the project becomes necessary. Complexities of issues keep challenging the industry of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) and address the importance of skills in collaborative work to deliver a great building design. A building that is not only aesthetic but also durable, sturdy, sustainable, and has positive influences on the surroundings. That said, collaboration skills become essential for students in the field of AEC. Concerning this current need in the industry, it becomes necessary for the educators as well as the undergraduate programs, especially in the field of AEC, to facilitate the students with exposure to a multi-disciplinary environment, to enhance the readiness of their graduates in the industry. The current pandemic makes the efforts harder. This study presents a case study-based research on enhancing the competency and learning experience of students through an international and multi-disciplinary collaborative environment in the form of joint studio assignments involving students of architecture and civil engineering. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches through triangulation methodology were used in the study. Results showed that students could enhance their knowledge as well as their skill to collaborate, especially in the design process.

Immersive Collaborative VR Application Design: A Case Study of Agile Virtual Design Over Distance

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a renewed interest in expanding the capabilities of remote collaboration tools. Studies show the importance of noticing peripheral cues, pointing to or manipulating real-world objects in face-to-face meetings. This case study investigated the opportunities of combining traditional video conferencing with a multi-user VR platform to enable the interactive collaborative design of a VR training experience between multiple stakeholders working from their homes. In this article, the authors reflect on the experience and contribute a fully online and immersive collaborative design workflow for future VR development projects. The authors believe this workflow is of benefit for remote collaboration in general, but particularly in severely restricted environments when face-to-face meetings are impossible. Copyright © 2021, IGI Global.

On-Line Project-Based Learning on Healthcare Technologies Against Epidemic Diseases: A COVID-19 Case Study

Quality technical education on healthcare technologies is still inaccessible to young adults in low-resource settings due to high costs, low-tech environments, and gaps in learning materials. The online and open-source collaborative Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology intends to introduce early-career engineers into the development of healthcare technologies by allowing students from all around the world, regardless of background or place of origin, to engage in collaborative design methods, the use of open-source resources and learning experiences from experts in the field. This paper discusses a case study in which the aforementioned methodology was implemented, the "COVID-19 Innovation Competition and Design Bootcamp 2020", which brought together 105 participants from 22 countries, mostly in Africa, to conceptualize the design of 10 medical devices in two weeks for an integral management of the COVID-19 pandemic that is applicable to other infectious disease outbreaks. The presented experience demonstrates that highly formative virtual PBL experiences can be carried out, in a cost-effective way and in connection with real societal needs, for which remarkable solutions can be found, by virtue of multidisciplinary and international cooperation. Our findings demonstrate that even if it is difficult to reach the degree of project completion achievable with longer-term and on-site design-build experiences, on-line PBL has been shown to promote students' professional skills in an effective way.

Improving distributed collaboration - methods for identification and developing of improvement potentials.

Due to the increasing globalization, collaboration in product development between different locations is gaining more importance. Current circumstances, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, are even forcing the introduction of distributed collaboration in product development. Regarding to the Covid-19 pandemic, in many cases the transition was completed in a short time and even unplanned. The transition to a distributed approach creates new, unexpected problems in the collaboration of distributed product development teams, which have to be solved continuously. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a concept that offers methods for the continuous improvement of distributed collaboration that are appropriate to the specific circumstances. Following a literature search, 135 participants were asked about the need for methodological support in identifying and developing improvement potentials in distributed collaboration. The demand was confirmed by the majority of participants. Consequently, a concept was developed to methodically support the improvement process. The developed concept was designed as an interactive tool, which offers the user methods for methodical approach to improvement potentials in accordance with his needs and resources. The basis is the problem-solving methodology SPALTEN. For a standardized and comprehensive description of the methods, fact sheets were prepared. The tool and the concept were evaluated in the industry in a distributed and agile development simulator. The evaluation confirmed the added benefit of the methodical support for the improvement process in the distributed collaboration.