The role of ICT as a partner in Architectural Design Education

DIY design: Developing a toolkit for the layman designer

This report describes the analysis of design as a profession as opposed to the do-it-yourself practice, and builds upon the results to develop a DIY toolkit that incorporates many design activities and methods found in the professional product design world. this was done by way of a pre-design, in which a small product was first designed. the...

Developing Usage Guidelines for a Card-Based Design Tool: A Case of the Positive Emotional Granularity Cards

Background Card-based design tools have gained popularity as a means to communicate<br/>research insights and to make them usable in a design process. There are various examples of card<br/>tools and guidelines for developing a card set itself, yet there has been little research into how the<br/>usage of card tools can be systematically...

Creating a Design Tool: Designing for the End-of-Use Consumer Experience in a Circular Economy: A design tool that enables designers to understand the current consumer experiences and design new experiences for the end-of-use of circular products

This report provides an analysis of the consumer experience at the end-of-use phase of a product. The study in this report focussed on the consumer-product relationship: how this plays a role in the process of product detachment, and what this means for products at the end-of-use, with a specific attention for products in a circular economy.<br/...

Design for Product care: The development of a design tool for product lifetime extension

To realize the shift towards a Circular Economy, products should stay usable as long as possible. Maintaining products is the most efficient way of retaining their desired level of performance. This is called Product care. Product care can be understood as any action that helps to prolong the lifetime of a product. The aim of this thesis is to...

Well-being for all: Using the theory of Consumer Wisdom to guide design that promotes the consumer, societal and environmental well-being

The aim of this thesis is to explore how designers can create well-being for all through product or service design. Well-being for all can be achieved through designing with the focus on Consumer Wisdom. Consumer Wisdom is defined as the pursuit of well-being for oneself and for others through mindful management of consumption-related choices...

Rate-Based Modelling of Plate-Packed Heat Integrated Distillation Columns

TechnipFMC is pushing innovations to reduce the emissions of ethylene plants separations. This development is also driven by customer demands. They face increasingly strict legislation on \ce{CO2} emissions. Separation in distillation columns is one of the major energy intensive unit operations in an ethylene plant, and increasing their...

A sustainable and reusable concrete facade system: An approach to improve the use of concrete in the Dutch housing market

Concrete is one of the most used and energy-demanding materials in the world and unfortunately it is currently not being used optimally, while it has a long lifespan and the potential to be reused. Also, because the Netherlands has the ambition to build 1 million houses by 2030, it offers the opportunity to tackle the concrete in the Dutch...

Not so big: Making data less overwhelming for designers: The development of a tool for novice designers to deal with big data without overwhelmingness feeling

From the internet to the sensors in wearable devices, people leave their digital traces behind both online and offline. Data is getting ubiquitous and cheap. Some new fields, like business intelligence, are recognized and emerging. As a trustworthy and precise material, data is also a valuable source for designers. It provides accurate and...

Assessment of Reinforcement Learning for CubeSat concept generation

The growing need for CubeSats could present strong demands for the use of automated systems during the early stage of the design cycle. Automated design tools that are able to incorporate the entire design space offered by the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components for CubeSats may potentially improve the design of a CubeSat, compared to...

Circularity in the structural design: The implementation of circular design alternatives for the load-bearing structure in the preliminary design phase

Politicians, scientific researchers and companies all know; the transition to a Circular Economy [CE] should start now, or actually should have started yesterday. The CE is an economic system that replaces the current take-make-waste linear system and replaces this with the reduction, reuse and recovering of resources. The challenge is to build...

Designing the used: Enhancing the consumer acceptance of refurbished luxury personal care products; a Philips Lumea Prestige case study

Refurbishment is a critical strategy in the circular economy (Bocken et al., 2016). Despite the environmental and financial benefits, refurbished products are not a popular consumer choice (Mugge et al., 2017). Refurbished products are seen as old, used and of low quality, and consumers worry that products are contaminated with traces of a prior...

Engineered Bamboo in Europe: A Study into Practical Application of Moso Bamboo-Based Building Elements in European Architecture

Engineered Moso bamboo has favorable mechanical properties and shows great potential for large scale application in European architecture due to its high renewability. However, lack of standardization and coherence in test data trongly hinders its practical application. In this research paper, the practical application potential of Moso bamboo...

StructuralComponents 9: Early-stage structural analysis and design of Universal prefab apartment buildings

This research introduces the concept of Universal Prefab (UP), a highly modular building system which uses only prefabricated elements to realise building designs. The discrete structural elements are connected with a standardized connection throughout the entire structure that allows for quick assembly, increasing the efficiency of construction...