Exploring richness in design spaces as a multi-level defined construct

It seems relevant for designers who are dealing with complex societal issues to be able to assess whether they appreciate the complexity of the design task sufficiently before the stages of the design and production process are reached, as these require informed decisions before committing substantial resources. We put forward that the ...

Facing complexity through varying the clarification of the design task: How a multi-contextual approach can empower design engineers to address complex challenges

Today, most challenges designers face are complex. One way industrial design engineers have learned to deal with this complexity is to simplify the problem early on—for example, by focusing on one particular context, e.g. user group. Variations are typically addressed, but preferably inside the simplified design task or even after initial...

Comparing Performance of Biomass Gasifier Stoves: Influence of a Multi-Context Approach

Millions of people worldwide die prematurely or suffer from severe health ailments due to cooking equipment that causes unhealthy doses of (household) air pollution. Many attempts to address this have fallen short because technology was not improved sufficiently or the way it was introduced constituted an ill fit with the broader “cooking eco...

Influence of Context Variation on Quality of Solutions: Experiences with Gasifier Stoves

Many global sustainable development issues affect large numbers of people, e.g. clean cooking. Most current projects focus on a specific use context, therefore do not scale well to new contexts and consequently do not reach enough beneficiaries. We present an approach, Context Variation by Design (CVD), in which insights from different contexts...