Design Brief Research Articles

A holistic approach to delivering sustainable design education in civil engineering

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present pedagogical approaches developed and implemented to deliver sustainable design education (SDE) to second-year undergraduate students on civil engineering programmes in the (then) School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University. In doing so, the work presented offers an example of how to help students understand the contested and contingent nature of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The research presented takes an action-based approach to the development of a teaching and assessment model centered on problem- and project-based learning in a real-world context. Findings Because of the use of a design brief, which addresses a practical infrastructure problem encountered by regional communities, the academic team were able to make arguments related to the three pillars of sustainability more accessible to the students. This suggests that pedagogical instruments based on problem- and project-based learning strategies are effective in delivering SDE. Practical implications The successful delivery of SDE requires commitment from the senior management teams leading individual departments as well as commitments embedded in the high-level strategies of Higher Education institutions. It was also found that some students need extra support from the teaching staff if their engagement through SDE is to be successful. This has practical implications for the amount of contact time built into undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes. Originality/value The teaching and assessment model presented in this paper addresses various substantive and normative issues associated with SDE making it relevant and transferable to courses other than civil engineering.

Designs for Flies + of Mice and Men: Design Approaches to Drosophila melanogaster.

Designs for Flies is an award-winning design-led interdisciplinary project between KYOTO Design Lab (D-Lab), the Department of Applied Biology at the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) and Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), Japan. Within the framework of speculative design yet using an inclusive methodology, Frank Kolkman, a young Dutch designer, took Professor Masamitsu Yamaguchi's climbing assay experiment with Drosophila in his genetic mapping for CMT as the point of departure. Kolkman sought to address two questions raised during his initial research: "Could alternative strategies be used to generate interest from pharmaceutical companies for obscure, complicated or 'unmarketable' diseases in drug research?" and "Could transgenic Drosophila be used for the wildcard testing of drug compounds directly by patients at home in the search for a possible cure?" The chapter will describe its genesis, design process and the challenges and potential of interdisciplinary projects of this nature along with the impact of the resulting concept, which incorporated service, system, product and interaction design. It won the Services and Systems category of the Dutch Design Awards (DDW) in 2016, and Kolkman was named DDW's Young Designer of the Year in October 2017. It was followed by Of Flies, Mice and Men: drosophila and the interconnected landscape of genes, a Drosophila-related science communication project by Marcel Helmer, Kolkman's successor as D-Lab Design Associate for which the design brief was based on issues raised by the first project. This is also described to highlight the differing issues, design approaches and results of this science/design collaboration.

Exploration of Climate Change in Architectural Design Studio

Many researches reveal that climate change is a significant public issue. With the rising awareness of climate change impacts by both national and international bodies, building climate resilience has become a major goal for many institutions. This influence began to find path in architectural design education. Architectural design education is mostly given in the design studios. Each semester, the studio instructors prepare design briefs that need to be completed in a required period of time with given constraints. This is an opportunity for the design studios to adapt new theories and approaches like climate change into the design study. This article describes the experiences of the studio team after the design work proposed for climate. The study explains the transition from research to design stage. The studio tutors collected data after close observations on 42 students from Yasar University, School of Architecture third year studio.

Modelling mechanical properties of the multilayer composite materials with the polyamide core

Due to the wide range of application for belt conveyors, engineers look for many different combinations of mechanical properties of conveyor and transmission belts. It can be made by creating multilayer or fibre reinforced composite materials from base thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers. In order to gain high strength with proper elasticity and friction coefficient, the core of the composite conveyor belt is made of polyamide film core, which can be combined with various types of polymer fabrics, films or even rubbers. In this paper authors show the complex model of multilayer composite belt with the polyamide core, which can be used in simulation analyses. The following model was derived based on the experimental research, which consisted of tensile, compression and shearing tests. In order to achieve the most accurate model, proper simulations in ABAQUS were made and then the results were compared with empirical mechanical characteristics of a conveyor belt. The main goal of this research is to fully describe the perforation process of conveyor and transmission belts for vacuum belt conveyors. The following model will help to develop design briefs for machines used for mechanical perforation.

Considering Art in a Hospital Environment from Children's and Young People's Perspectives

In response to research evidence, (predominantly research with adults) the need for artwork in healthcare environments are now regularly part of the initial design briefs for hospitals. The resulting artwork can be a collection of commissions; it can also be included as a seamless extension of the interior design concept. In the case of paediatric hospitals, it is unlikely that 'art' which is simply a graphic treatment applied to key surfaces throughout the hospital environment could function in the ways that children and young people have identified in research as being valuable in their experience of hospitalisation. This one environmental attribute will be used to understand some of the key components of a hospital environment involved in children's feeling of well-being from their perspectives.

Including Stakeholder Intent in Precinct Information Models

Planning, building, and occupying a precinct, involves many stakeholders over significant periods of time. The development and evolution of the precinct is determined through decisions made by these stakeholders, jointly or singly, in response to perceived existing problems, or to satisfy anticipated future needs. The stakeholders are therefore all participating in an ongoing “design” process for the precinct. The current state of the precinct (its physical, social, psychological “fabric”) at any given time is a result of their cumulative decisions. However, the dynamic that drives the evolution of the precinct is expressed through stakeholder indicators of future intent (stated problems and/or aspirational visions).Stakeholders come and go over the lifetime of a precinct. Their interests in, and perspectives regarding, the precinct vary, which means that the information they require or generate about the precinct also varies. Additionally, the software they use varies, so information has tended to remain in separate repositories (financial, urban planning, building design, and other specialities) This disaggregation of interest over time can lead to losses of information, miscommunication between stakeholders, and ultimately to a lack of any shared meaning about the precinct especially if the intent of stakeholders that has driven decisions is not retained.The ongoing Precinct Information Modelling research project within the CRC for Low Carbon Living seeks to address the issue of information sharing for precincts. This paper describes the data entities defined in the author's own research on design briefing that now have been appended to the proposed standardised PIM data schema to allow for this perceived need to integrate stakeholder intent.

Is this a design-worthy dilemma? Identifying relevant and inspiring concern conflicts as input for user-centred design

Personal dilemmas can be valuable starting points for user-centred design. Since dilemmas prevail in everyday life, designers can identify many dilemmas relevant for a given design brief. It can therefore be a challenge to choose a target dilemma as a means to frame an appropriate problem space. To address this challenge, this paper proposes seven qualities of 'design-worthy' dilemmas. These key qualities were derived from a cross-comparison of four dilemma-driven design cases, and were clustered in three categories: 1) relevance for target users; 2) potential to inspire design ideas; 3) meaningful formulation of conflicting concerns. The qualities of design-worthy dilemmas explicate the considerations designers have when selecting a target dilemma, and thus, they can facilitate introspection and discussion in problem framing. In addition, the case studies demonstrate the main activities involved in dilemma-driven design, namely discovery, definition, and application.

Is this a design-worthy dilemma? Identifying relevant and inspiring concern conflicts as input for user-centred design

Personal dilemmas can be valuable starting points for user-centred design. Since dilemmas prevail in everyday life, designers can identify many dilemmas relevant for a given design brief. It can therefore be a challenge to choose a target dilemma as a means to frame an appropriate problem space. To address this challenge, this paper proposes seven qualities of 'design-worthy' dilemmas. These key qualities were derived from a cross-comparison of four dilemma-driven design cases, and were clustered in three categories: 1) relevance for target users; 2) potential to inspire design ideas; 3) meaningful formulation of conflicting concerns. The qualities of design-worthy dilemmas explicate the considerations designers have when selecting a target dilemma, and thus, they can facilitate introspection and discussion in problem framing. In addition, the case studies demonstrate the main activities involved in dilemma-driven design, namely discovery, definition, and application.

Automatic derivation of design schemata and subsequent generation of designs

AbstractThis paper presents a method for automatically generating new designs from a set of existing objects of the same class using machine learning. In this particular work, we use a custom parametric chair design program to produce a large set of chairs that are tested for their physical properties using ergonomic simulations. Design schemata are found from this set of chairs and used to generate new designs by placing constraints on the generating parameters used in the program. The schemata are found by training decision trees on the chair data sets. These are automatically reverse engineered by examining the structure of the trees and creating a schema for each positive leaf. By finding a range of schemata, rather than a single solution, we maintain a diverse design space. This paper also describes how schemata for different properties can be combined to generate new designs that possess all properties required in a design brief. The method is shown to consistently produce viable designs, covering a large range of our design space, and demonstrates a significant time saving over generate and test using the same program and simulations.

Bit by byt towards a contemporary conjoint interior: from Dom Narkomfin to a new social condenser

Conjoint interiors, the semi-public interior spaces located in, for example, large-scale dwelling projects, host different functions for a variety of users. Designers of conjoint interiors today face the major challenge of accommodating the increasingly varied design briefs of this variety of users. In these environments, people today tend to emphasize intangible qualities, the “feel” of the environment, much more than tangible ones, that is, the “look” of the environment. Consequently, instead of working with a purely spatial design brief, designers are now required to work with more emotional briefs, taking into account not only the objective and physical characteristics, but also more subjective requirements. Although it is clear that designers of these conjoint interiors will need to work within a more human-centered framework, the question remains of how this process can become more focused towards creating intangible qualities and specific spatial affordances. To address this question, our contribution investigates the intangible qualities and the design approach of two cases: Dom Narkomfin, the so-called “social condenser” (designed by Ginzburg in 1928), and Layer Cake, the outcome of a 2015 design exercise of a residence for older persons that approaches the conjoint interior from a renewed social perspective. These cases will be analyzed via two lenses: (1) a societal perspective, researching context and target group, and (2) a more anthropological perspective, focusing on experiences and intangible design qualities. The results will be used to propose architectural-theoretical principles that attempt to reinvigorate the “social condenser” concept as a way to address new design briefs in conjoint interiors today.

The effect of previous group interaction on individual ideation novelty and variety

The effect of antecedent group interaction on individual ideation is investigated, through an experiment based on generation of concepts by two groups of industrial design students following the same design brief. The underlying hypothesis is that preceding individual ideation with group interaction promotes increase in effectiveness of individual ideation. Results were analyzed for maximum novelty of individual ideation, showing a positive post-treatment effect, departing sharply from the novelty degradation in the control group in the second phase of the experiment. Analysis of the ideation outcomes using a variety metric, complement the findings obtained for novelty, in characterizing the effect of group interaction in creative ideation, demonstrating an inverse effect of previous group interaction leading to decreased variety of ideation.

The social production of design space

The production of design space refers to the activity of an individual or a group of individuals considering alternatives and possibilities for a design brief. Design studies often consider constraints to be a major determinant of design space, yet this paper introduces the notion of contradiction to underscore a dialectical determination of design space. The intention here is to characterise the production of design space as a socio-material rather than a cognitive process. This is accomplished through an in-depth look at a medical imaging centre project and an experiment with design students about the same project. In comparison to the original project, the students' activity reproduced the same contradictions faced by practitioners.

Preventing or inventing? Understanding the effects of non-prescriptive design briefs

This paper discusses observations of an architecture and environmental engineering undergraduate design studio project assigned to 4th year students at a UK university. In the UK, most architecture courses are characterised by a high proportion of design studio teaching supported by varying amount of technical modules that include environmental and construction learning. Recent scholarship on sustainability education in architecture, discusses the necessity for new approaches that enhance transdisciplinarity, autonomy and independent decision-making. However, despite increasing importance to both practice and policy, few empirical or theoretical examples account for the implications or experiences of such an approach. This study presents the experiences of an architecture and environmental engineering design studio whereby studio activities are closely interlinked with technical engineering enquiry and experiment. Specifically, the research examines the challenges and opportunities students face when assigned a design project that attempts to translate independently derived briefs into novel architectural environmentally engineered interpretations. The analysis draws on a series of ethnographic narrative and visual observations carried over a period of 6 months. The implications of the findings are threefold. First, the analysis shows the opportunities an integrated cross-disciplinary approach can offer, where the gap between creative and technical domains is narrowed. Second, the study presents some of the challenges faced by increased autonomy and lack of prescription that students encounter. Third, the paper contributes to an emerging agenda of sustainability education in the built environment by offering valuable insights into the benefits and difficulties cross-disciplinary approaches pose to architectural education.

Joined up Thinking?

The aim of this paper is to provide educators and potential industrial partners with an insight into students' perceptions of working with industry during their undergraduate studies, and to highlight, through comments from academic staff, the effect on their design outcomes. The paper focuses on a collaborative design activity conducted with second-year product design students in a UK higher education institution. The study is part of the ongoing pedagogic development of a module and programme relating to design practice and covers two academic years – in one year the design brief was based on a review of literature and in the second an industrial partner provided the information. Academic staff and industrial partners were interviewed; students completed a survey regarding their experience and perception of working with the industrial partner in the module. The results indicated that there were significant improvements in student engagement, academic grading and the perceived quality of the final design outcomes. The results also showed that students not only saw industry collaboration as an essential element in their undergraduate learning but also that it was a key factor when deciding which programme to study.

Comprehensive Capability Model for Managing Business Driven Innovation through the use of Design Quality Scorecards

Identifying business opportunities by matching an organization’s internal capabilities with its external environment is to a large extent about applying the right framework to risk and return. This paper first proposes a new framework, the Market-Technology Risk Matrix (MTR matrix) and a Design Balanced Scorecard method based on Design Quality Criteria (DQC), a set of nine criteria derived from auditing design awards and design briefs worldwide for matching an organization’s capabilities and its strategic environment to innovation type. By following a four-step process the connection between an organization’s cultures, strategic environment, innovation strategy and design metrics can be established and communicated through Design Balanced Scorecards. We then outline the design opportunities available, corresponding to Incremental and Breakthrough Innovation strategies, as well as relevant metrics for managing their implementation. Finally, we illustrate both types of innovation strategies with examples from two corporations – Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics with contrasting capability. In conclusion, an organizations’ risk-attitude is at the core of building competitive advantages and informs the relevant design metrics for managing innovation performance. The paper thus contributes to the domain of decision-making and in particular to decision-support literature.

Innovation Design: Made in China 2025

The Chinese focus on innovation design as a way to transform challenges into opportunities in the knowledge economy.From speed to quality, from products to brands, from “made” to “created”—China's new design brief.

Experimental Capitalism

From the introduction:
 The question of how aesthetic practices create economic value is a question of the way in which specific artistic and critical practices feed into a capitalistic order of production. In this paper I draw attention to this question within the practice of Critical Design. I study a 4-week design brief that took place at the Royal College of Art in London 2009. More generally, I account for the inclusion of artistic tools in the process of invention as a response to a capitalistic logic of order, where economic value are dependent on the valorisation of affective labour and provocative means of invention. This exploration aims to contribute to a temporal-ontological approach to innovation following the definition by Sanford Kwinter saying that: ‘… no novelty appears without becoming and no becoming without novelty’ (Kwinter 2001 p. 5). From my participation in the brief I consider a specific artistic intervention called the Berlin Street experiment and the way in which the experience of that event co-constitute the experimental setting.

Designing innovative business models with a framework that promotes experimentation

Purpose – Business models to date have remained the creation of management, however, it is the belief of the authors that designers should be critically approaching, challenging and creating new business models as part of their practice. This belief portrays a new era where business model constructs become the new design brief of the future and fuel design and innovation to work together at the strategic level of an organisation. Design/methodology/approach – The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate business model design. The research followed a deductive structured qualitative content analysis approach utilizing a predetermined categorization matrix. The analysis of forty business cases uncovered commonalities of key strategic drivers behind these innovative business models. Findings – Five business model typologies were derived from this content analysis, from which quick prototypes of new business models can be created. Research limitations/implications – Implications from this research suggest there is no “one right” model, but rather through experimentation, the generation of many unique and diverse concepts can result in greater possibilities for future innovation and sustained competitive advantage. Originality/value – This paper builds upon the emerging research and exploration into the importance and relevance of dynamic, design-driven approaches to the creation of innovative business models. These models aim to synthesize knowledge gained from real world examples into a tangible, accessible and provoking framework that provide new prototyping templates to aid the process of business model experimentation.

Design, Dignity and Due Process: The Construction of the Coffs Harbour Courthouse

The discourse around the merit of public architecture often depicts the architect as having complete autonomy over its design. This belies the constraints placed upon creative solutions by design briefs or the intense negotiations between the State, the architect and the various stakeholders involved in the construction process. Through a case study examining the construction of a courthouse, we demonstrate the difficulties in pursuing improvements to the phenomenological experience of justice within these constraints. It reveals the need for architectural knowledge to be shared for the common good in order to resist practices that replicate existing conditions and inhibit innovation.

Two modes of a literary architecture: Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates

Tschumi’s experimental use of the literary text as part of design briefs for students at the Architectural Association in the late 1970s formed the basis for a preoccupation with what he termed the disjunction between space and the events that happen within it. For Coates, the literary briefs triggered a fixation with what was happening in space – but instead of focusing on its conceptual interaction with events, he moved towards the dramatisation of architecture. Grounded in the architects' shared teaching at the AA, the article discusses the early briefs and projects that shaped the directions they would each take.