Opportunities For Design Research Articles

The Impact of Metaverse on Graphic Design

This paper will look at how the metaverse is revolutionizing graphic design by enabling collaborative design processes, creating immersive virtual environments, and introducing unique challenges and opportunities for graphic designers. The metaverse revolutionizes graphic design through collaborative processes and immersive virtual environments, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for designers. Graphic designers can delve into the creation of immersive and interactive digital environments, design virtual avatars and 3D objects, and contribute to the development of visually stunning landscapes that will define the metaverse. They must adapt their skills and techniques to convey information and captivate users within this new medium effectively. In addition, graphic designers working in the metaverse must be mindful of ethical considerations related to inclusivity, accessibility, cultural sensitivity, and privacy. They should strive to create designs that are inclusive, accessible, and culturally sensitive, while also ensuring the privacy and security of user data. Overall, the metaverse presents graphic designers with new challenges and opportunities. They must continuously update their knowledge and skills to stay at the forefront of technological advancements in order to create compelling and impactful designs in the metaverse.

CoAIcoder: Examining the Effectiveness of AI-assisted Human-to-Human Collaboration in Qualitative Analysis

While AI-assisted individual qualitative analysis has been substantially studied, AI-assisted collaborative qualitative analysis (CQA) – a process that involves multiple researchers working together to interpret data—remains relatively unexplored. After identifying CQA practices and design opportunities through formative interviews, we designed and implemented CoAIcoder, a tool leveraging AI to enhance human-to-human collaboration within CQA through four distinct collaboration methods. With a between-subject design, we evaluated CoAIcoder with 32 pairs of CQA-trained participants across common CQA phases under each collaboration method. Our findings suggest that while using a shared AI model as a mediator among coders could improve CQA efficiency and foster agreement more quickly in the early coding stage, it might affect the final code diversity. We also emphasize the need to consider the independence level when using AI to assist human-to-human collaboration in various CQA scenarios. Lastly, we suggest design implications for future AI-assisted CQA systems.

Recent Progress of Remediating Heavy Metal Contaminated Soil Using Layered Double Hydroxides as Super-Stable Mineralizer.

Heavy metal contamination in soil, which is harmful to both ecosystem and mankind, has attracted worldwide attention from the academic and industrial communities. However, the most-widely used remediation technologies such as electrochemistry, elution, and phytoremediation. suffer from either secondary pollution, long cycle time or high cost. In contrast, in situ mineralization technology shows great potential due to its universality, durability and economical efficiency. As such, the development of mineralizers with both high efficiency and low-cost is the core of in situmineralization. In 2021, the concept of 'Super-Stable Mineralization' was proposed for the first time by Kong et al.[1] The layered double hydroxides (denoted as LDHs), with the unique host-guest intercalated structure and multiple interactions between the host laminate and the guest anions, are considered as an ideal class of materials for super-stable mineralization. In this review, we systematically summarize the application of LDHs in the treatment of heavy metal contaminated soil from the view of: 1) the structure-activity relationship of LDHs in in situ mineralization, 2) the advantages of LDHs in mineralizing heavy metals, 3) the scale-up preparation of LDHs-based mineralizers and 4) the practical application of LDHs in treating contaminated soil. At last, we highlight the challenges and opportunities for the rational design of LDH-based mineralizer in the future.

Covalent Organic Frameworks: Opportunities for Rational Materials Design in Cancer Therapy

AbstractNanomedicines are extensively used in cancer therapy. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are crystalline organic porous materials with several benefits for cancer therapy, including porosity, design flexibility, functionalizability, and biocompatibility. This review examines the use of COFs in cancer therapy from the perspective of reticular chemistry and function‐oriented materials design. First, the modification sites and functionalization methods of COFs are discussed, followed by their potential as multifunctional nanoplatforms for tumor targeting, imaging, and therapy by integrating functional components. Finally, some challenges in the clinical translation of COFs are presented with the hope of promoting the development of COF‐based anticancer nanomedicines and bringing COFs closer to clinical trials.

Covalent Organic Frameworks: Opportunities for Rational Materials Design in Cancer Therapy.

Nanomedicines are extensively used in cancer therapy. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are crystalline organic porous materials with several benefits for cancer therapy, including porosity, design flexibility, functionalizability, and biocompatibility. This review examines the use of COFs in cancer therapy from the perspective of reticular chemistry and function-oriented materials design. First, the modification sites and functionalization methods of COFs are discussed, followed by their potential as multifunctional nanoplatforms for tumor targeting, imaging, and therapy by integrating functional components. Finally, some challenges in the clinical translation of COFs are presented with the hope of promoting the development of COF-based anticancer nanomedicines and bringing COFs closer to clinical trials.

How Productive is the Productive Struggle? Lessons Learned from a Scoping Review

Since its first notable appearance in the Second Handbook of Research on Mathematics Teaching and Learning, the phrase productive struggle has garnered support from a few, yet very influential, educational researchers. However, since the phrase was popularized by Hiroko Warshauer in 2011, examinations of the productive struggle have grown substantially within mathematics education. In this article, we present a systematic review of the literature on the productive struggle to quantify the breadth and depth of existing work in the area. Our analysis indicates that many studies: (1) provide a direct implementation of the productive struggle; (2) primarily involve teachers and not students; (3) present primarily qualitative or non-empirical research approaches; and (4) specify the NCTM content area focus less often across studies. Thus, we conclude that there are opportunities for rigorous research designs reporting on observable trends in the implementation of the productive struggle, explicitly targeting underexamined NCTM content and process standards, and focusing on how the productive struggle can support equity in mathematics. We believe that these opportunities should be investigated to provide a broader evidence base for developing meaningful experiences in mathematics for school-aged children that capitalize on the interconnectedness of attribution, meta-cognition, and controlled frustration in mathematics learning.

High-throughput screening of suitable nitrogen carriers for chemical looping ammonia synthesis

Chemical looping ammonia synthesis is a promising pathway to synthesise ammonia with lower energy and economic costs than the current Haber-Bosch process, for example, by lowering the operating temperature and/or pressure, whilst maintaining comparable NH3 yield. A solid nitrogen carrier is used to mediate the reaction and form ammonia in consecutive steps. In contrast to the Haber-Bosch process, the thermodynamics and kinetics of the reaction are dependent on the properties of the nitrogen carrier. This introduces additional opportunities for novel designs, though finding suitable materials becomes the challenge. Herein, nitrides from the Materials Project database are screened based on their equilibrium nitrogen pressures and nitrogen exchange capacities. The equilibrium nitrogen pressure was used as a proxy to determine the equilibrium ammonia mole fraction of the reaction, a key performance indicator for chemical looping ammonia synthesis. Using high-throughput gas-solid equilibrium calculations, 2515 nitrides were screened, and 111 nitrides were found to achieve sufficiently high ammonia mole fraction at equilibrium to compete with the Haber-Bosch process. Due to large inaccuracies associated with theoretical material properties, the viability of screened candidates cannot be adequately ascertained. The quality and quantity of theoretical and experimental data for nitrogen carriers, respectively, must be improved further to identify suitable materials for chemical looping ammonia synthesis.

Circular Maker Cities: Maker Space Typologies and Circular Urban Design

Maker spaces can contribute significantly to the circular economy of cities; they demonstrate not only the economic potential of inner loop circularity, but also provide tangible evidence of spatial and social integration of production into the urban context. This paper presents findings from a typological analysis of 326 maker spaces in seven European cities, with a focus on selected exemplar case studies to reveal design characteristics, principles, and opportunities for circular city development. The research shows that circular economy principles of ‘reduce-reuse-recyle’ are aligned with maker spaces such as repair cafés, secondhand shops, and fab labs, but requires additional definition with respect to material flow and spaces for recycling to underpin circular making. In the context of cities, circularity is revealed by a spatial tightening of resource cycles that close the loops of product life cycles. Furthermore, urban maker spaces demonstrate social engagement and a relationship to local production that inherently includes maintenance, repair, reuse, and redistribution. This paper defines five maker typologies, presents exemplars of each from different urban contexts and posits hybrid design strategies for the transition to circular maker cities. Through the adoption of these findings into urban planning policy, it is possible accelerate circular urban production and close the sustainability gap between small-scale local and large-scale regional manufacturing.

Recognition of Oligonucleotide C by Polydopamine-Coated Solid-State Nanopores.

Selective recognition of short oligonucleotides at the single-molecule level is particularly important for early disease detection and treatment. In this work, polydopamine (PDA)-coated nanopores were prepared via self-polymerization as a solid-state nanopore sensing platform for the recognition of oligonucleotide C (PolyC). The PDA coating possesses abundant active sites, such as indole, amino, carboxyl, catechol, and quinone structures, which had interactions with short oligonucleotides to slow down the translocation rate. PDA-coated nanopores selectively interact with PolyC20 by virtue of differences in hydrogen bonding forces, generating a larger blocking current, while polyA and polyT demonstrated very small blockings. At the same time, PDA-coated nanopores can sensitively distinguish PolyC with different lengths, such as 20, 14, and 10 nt. The functionalization of PDA on the solid-state nanopore provides an opportunity for the rational design of the recognition surface for biomolecules.

Fe7C3 nanoparticles anchored on N-doped biochar as electrocatalyst for highly efficient oxygen evolution reaction

As the crucial step of electrolytic water, oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is urgent to be enhanced by developing the most efficient electrocatalysts to accelerate the sluggish OER kinetics. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbon-based Fe7C3 clusters with hierarchical pore structure (NHAC@Fe7C3) were synthesized via a two-step method of FeCl3 and seaweed liquid-phase impregnation combined with physical activation. The optimum NHAC@Fe7C3 = 3:1 catalyst (with a mass ratio of Sargassum Horneri to FeCl3 of 3:1) demonstrated much better catalytic activity and durability towards OER in alkaline electrolyte than the most noble-metal-free catalysts, of which the overpotential reached 181 mV at 10 mA cm−2. Long-term discharging stability of over 33 h at 10 mA cm−2 current density. The excellent performance is attributed to the synergistic effect of graphitic carbon and Fe7C3 clusters, hierarchical pore structure and good electrical conductivity. Density functional theory calculations confirm that the free energy for the potential-limiting step is reduced by the synergistic effect of N-doped carbon and Fe7C3 substrance. This study employs a simple and effective method to synthesize iron carbide embedded in algae-derived biochar, providing an opportunity for the rational design of robust performance electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction.

Engineering heterogeneous synergistic interface and multifunctional cobalt-iron site enabling high-performance oxygen evolution reaction

It has been extensively researched that oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in alkaline conditions involves dynamic surface restructuring. In particular, the development and design of sulfide/oxide pre-catalyst can reasonably adjust the composition and structure after surface reconstruction, which is very important for oxygen evolution reaction. Herein, a simple two-step hydrothermal method was used to achieve in situ S leaching and doping by precipitation-dissolution equilibrium, inducing the composition change and structure reconstruction of CoFe oxides. In addition, the cross-linked nanosheet structure generated in situ widely exposes the active area, and the crystal/amorphous interface accelerates the charge and mass transfer efficiency. The structurally transformed FeOOH and CoOOH showed excellent OER activity, with overpotentials of 299 and 322.2 mV at 50 and 100 mA cm−2, significantly superior to one-step or uncured catalysts. Low-cost iron based materials combined with simple methods can be easily mass-produced. This provides an opportunity for the effective design of heterogeneous surface reconfigurable electrocatalysts for practical water electrolysis.

A direct electrospinning strategy prepared series of coal-derived nanofibers for efficient oil-water separation

Oily wastewater treatment is an arduous global problem. Electrospinning has great potential applications in construction of durable and highly efficient oil–water separation membranes. In this article, low-cost coal was directly incorporated into the fiber skeleton to enhance the roughness of C-NF and impart hydrophobicity (WCA = 130°). The gravity-driven oil flux exceeded 600 L m−2h−1 with a separation efficiency of 96.5 % for emulsions. However, successful mitigation of surface fouling while maintaining efficient flux stability and separation efficiency remains a challenge for C-NF membranes. Herein, we adjusted the diameter of fiber membranes by controlling the heat treatment process and then introduced a vapor deposition technique to achieve super-hydrophobicity (＞150°) and super-lipophilicity (0°) in the obtained C-NFOH and C-NFCH fibers. As a result, these fibers exhibit high flux and separation efficiency for gravity-driven separation of oil/water mixtures and water-in-oil emulsions. Particularly, the C-NFOH membrane exhibits a superior ability to separate water-in-oil emulsions with an efficiency of up to 99.5 %, surpassing that of both C-NF (96.5 %) and C-NFOH (99.2 %) membranes. Furthermore, the robust C-NFOH and C-NFCH membranes exhibit exceptional self-cleaning properties. These membranes are fabricated via direct electrospinning of coal, offering novel opportunities for advanced membrane design in the realm of oil/water emulsion separation.

Where Does My Model Underperform? A Human Evaluation of Slice Discovery Algorithms

Machine learning (ML) models that achieve high average accuracy can still underperform on semantically coherent subsets ("slices") of data. This behavior can have significant societal consequences for the safety or bias of the model in deployment, but identifying these underperforming slices can be difficult in practice, especially in domains where practitioners lack access to group annotations to define coherent subsets of their data. Motivated by these challenges, ML researchers have developed new slice discovery algorithms that aim to group together coherent and high-error subsets of data. However, there has been little evaluation focused on whether these tools help humans form correct hypotheses about where (for which groups) their model underperforms. We conduct a controlled user study (N = 15) where we show 40 slices output by two state-of-the-art slice discovery algorithms to users, and ask them to form hypotheses about an object detection model. Our results provide positive evidence that these tools provide some benefit over a naive baseline, and also shed light on challenges faced by users during the hypothesis formation step. We conclude by discussing design opportunities for ML and HCI researchers. Our findings point to the importance of centering users when creating and evaluating new tools for slice discovery.

Towards positive energy islands – a Danish case study

The Danish island of “Ærø” has the ambition of becoming the first Danish island to be self-sufficient in renewable energy and CO2 neutral by 2025, as well as fossil fuel free by 2030. This work investigates the feasibility of re-designing part of the island’s energy system to become the first Danish positive energy island (PEI), evaluating various design scenarios and opportunities for improving and modifying the current energy supply and distribution scheme. The district is modelled considering all building specifications and characteristics and the energy supply systems using the urban scale modelling tool City Energy Analyst (CEA). A simulation of the base-case scenario is performed to calibrate the performance. Different energy improvement strategies targeting building envelopes and energy generation and supply systems are created and implemented in CEA. Six improvement packages are created and simulated. It is demonstrated that a PEI could be built in the district under consideration through a comprehensive energy improvement package of envelope-targeting techniques, energy system upgrades, and the expansion of renewable energy systems. The package includes LED lighting, heat pump installation, and photovoltaic-thermal units. This will enable meeting the annual net need for electricity while producing 20% excess heat.

TSAR-ILP: Tile-Based, Synchronization-AwaRe ILP Allocating Heterogeneous Platforms for Streaming Applications

Automatic design space exploration (DSE) is key in hardware-software (HW/SW) co-design. To cope with the large design space, explorations are often heuristic-based and/or approximate yielding potentially locally optimal solutions. Without knowing the globally optimal solution, strong assertions about performance upper / lower bounds cannot be made. In contrast, integer linear programming (ILP) formulations can produce exact (optimal) solutions. Previous ILP-based formulations, however, lack support for tile-based architectures and realistic synchronization models, limiting their DSE capabilities. This work introduces a tile-based, synchronization-aware ILP (TSAR-ILP) formulation that overcomes previous limitations. With TSAR-ILP, the allocation / binding problems are introduced and formalized, attaining optimal solutions for mapping streaming applications onto template platforms. Using TSAR-ILP, this work explores a hardware acceleratorrich (HWACC-rich) platform with direct HWACC-to-HWACC communication under HW area constraints for 40 OpenVX applications. To illustrate design opportunities given by (a) the ILP formulation and (b) direct HWACC-to-HWACC communication, this paper analyzes the impact of job size. Results show that selecting smaller job sizes yields performance improvements and less area usage at the cost of slightly increased synchronization overhead. A job size reduction from 1 kB to 256 bytes gives 3.51x average performance increase across 40 applications. Finally, DSE with TSAR-ILP is shown not to be prohibitive through scalability analysis using a set of 5000 synthetic applications with varying size (10-125 nodes), with 94.3% of applications successfully achieving optimal solutions under 60 seconds.

Strategic Design Opportunities in User Experiences in Restaurants in Lima, Peru

Este trabajo explora las oportunidades del diseño de experiencias en la industria restaurantera de Perú, para lo cual se presentan los resultados de un estado de la cuestión en materia de modelos para evaluar la experiencia de los comensales en el restaurante; la revisión incluye modelos como SERVICESCAPE y DINESCAPE. Entre otras conclusiones, se identificó que la combinación de indicadores de los modelos analizados, en especial el modelo DINESCAPE, permite comprender los factores y aspectos más relevantes para una buena experiencia en restaurantes; sin embargo, esta se debe adaptar a cada marca, según su tipo, público objetivo y oferta gastronómica. Por último, se concluye que el diseño estratégico, a través del rol del diseñador, debe ser considerado en el Perú como referente para el diseño de experiencias en el ámbito de restaurantes de la ciudad de Lima.

Gesundheitsförderliche Gestaltung von Digitalisierungsprozessen in Organisationen – Wissenschaftlicher Überblick von Anforderungen und Unterstützungsfaktoren für Beschäftigte

Designing health-promoting digitalisation processes in organisations: Scientific overview of demands and support factors for employees Objective: Digitalisation processes can bring about far-reaching changes in how work is organised and influence the working conditions of employees. This review article examines the demands and support factors which employees experience in the course of such digitalisation processes and how these can be designed in a way that promotes health. Methods: A systematic literature search in the PubMed and Web of Science databases was conducted. German and English-language studies published from the year 2013 onwards which examined specific digitalisation measures/projects in companies or public institutions and described results on the impact of digitalisation processes on employees or with regard to process design were included. The results were presented as a qualitative summary. Results: Overall, nine studies were included in the review. A lack of goals, strategies and responsibilities for the implementation of digitalisation measures, a lack of transparency, increased workload as well as insufficient support and time resources can be perceived as demanding by employees. Conversely, comprehensive information, active involvement, the provision of training and support at technical level and by supervisors comprise support factors in the process. Accordingly, the preparation and organisation of the process, personnel resources, support measures, participation and communication offer relevant opportunities for a health-promoting design of the digitalisation project. Conclusions: Organisations should consider and help shape potential impacts of digitalisation processes for their employees right from the beginning of the measure. This can be achieved by understanding the implementation of digitalisation measures as a holistic process which requires change management and change leadership. Keywords: digitalisation – digital transformation – change management – workplace health promotion

Natural Revolution: Sharing value with the first owners. The case of AJE in Peru

This study reveals how a company designed and developed a shared value initiative from a new product line, contributing to the sustainable development goals in Peru. The paper aims to identify the main characteristics of the collective impact achieved by Shared Value strategies of the Peruvian multinational company, AJE Group. The authors use an empirical case study of one of the biggest multinational companies in Peru to build upon Kramer’s model for shared value initiatives and analyze each of its five elements for shared value. The findings of this paper allow practitioners, as well as policy-makers, to identify sustainable managerial practices and opportunities for sustainability-oriented public policy design which can be implemented in other organizations.

Cross-dimensional valley excitons from Förster coupling in arbitrarily twisted stacks of monolayer semiconductors

In stacks of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers with arbitrary twisting angles, we explore a new class of bright excitons arising from the pronounced Förster coupling, whose dimensionality is tuned by its in-plane momentum. The low energy sector at small momenta is two-dimensional, featuring a Mexican Hat dispersion, while the high energy sector at larger momenta becomes three-dimensional (3D) with sizable group velocity both in-plane and out-of-plane. By choices of the spacer thickness, versatile surface or interface exciton modes localized at designated layers can emerge out of the cross-dimensional bulk dispersion for a topological origin, which can be mapped to the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger soliton. Moreover, step-edges in spacers can be exploited for engineering lateral interfaces to enable interlayer communication of the topological interface exciton. Combined with the polarization selection rule inherited from the monolayer building block, these exotic exciton properties open up new opportunities for multilayer design towards 3D integration of valley exciton optoelectronics.

Minor additions of Sn suppress the omega phase formation in beta titanium alloys

A critical characteristic of β-Ti alloys is the inevitable formation of ω-precipitates during certain heat treatments which leads to embrittlement, or even to a complete loss of ductility. Therefore, alloy design with the goal to inhibit the elementary ω-formation process is of utmost importance. Here, we propose a design strategy for prototypical β-type Ti–Cr–(Mo) alloys to alleviate this problem using only minor additions of Sn. Upon addition of Sn, we observed an extensive deceleration or even suppression of the ω-formation kinetics during isothermal ageing. Furthermore, the internal friction response of the elementary formation process indicated a decisive reduction of potential ω-nucleation sites, while the activation energy of the process remained almost unchanged. The results show, that the addition of Sn can significantly increase the width of the time–temperature process window and the long-time ageing resistance of β-Ti alloys, opening up huge opportunities for advanced alloy design and manufacturing routes.