Design and material selection for lowering the environmental impact of Dutch office buildings: Investigating the impact of clients' initial and future requirements on the final design and material composition of a building's load bearing structure

In order to help the building and construction sector move towards a Circular Economy and lower its environmental impact, a better founded choice regarding the design and selection of building materials for a building’s load bearing structure is required. By investigating different design strategies that focus on optimizing various aspects of...

The strategic value of design for remanufacturing: a case study of professional imaging equipment

Remanufacturing offers an approach to extend product lifetime beyond its first use. After restoring products to original quality, they are reintroduced to the market. To make products more suited for this approach, and to increase resource-efficiency, design for remanufacturing can be incorporated for new product development. Academic...

Environmental factors influencing target selection for residential burglary: experimental study using virtual reality

Data on the decision-making process of residential burglars at the micro-level are scarce. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, none of the related studies have investigated multiple relationships between the design features of a target, a burglar’s assessment of effort and risk involved in the crime, and the final decision on target...

Strategically establishing address validation as part of a digital identity: An opportunity for PostNL to establish a reliable digital relationship with Dutch consumers to realise improved shipment matching and provide a more fraud resistant delivery ecosystem

The initial goal of this graduation project was to find a way to establish a reliable digital relationship with PostNL’s consumer. This is considered an important part of a digital transformation strategy that is necessary for traditional postal companies to stay relevant in a digital era. One of the main challenges of this digital era, relevant...

Design for happiness-enhancing activities: Development of design strategies for the activities of learning to forgive and avoiding overthinking

This research-by-design project provides designers with new strategies to design for sustained well-being.Positive activities have been proposed as the most promising starting point to improve well-being (Wiese et al., 2020). Currently, 14 activities have been identified (Lyubomirsky, 2007; Wiese et al., 2019). Avoiding...

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...

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...

Better sleep experience for the critically ill: A comprehensive strategy for designing hospital soundscapes

In this paper, the sleep phenomenon is considered in relation to critical care soundscapes with the intention to inform hospital management, medical device producers and policy makers regarding the complexity of the issue and possible modes of design interventions. We propose a comprehensive strategy based on soundscape design approach that...

Compliant Remote-Center-of-Motion Mechanism Optimized for Energy-Dispersive Spectroscopy

In-situ sample holders with double-tilting capabilities are used to insert and position samples inside a transmission electron microscope for dynamic imaging. However, the performance of these sample holders, regarding energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis, is not on par with their single-tilt counterparts. By analyzing the EDS...

Development of a knowledge sharing game to design collaborations in a hierarchical organisation: How innovation strategies can be implemented at the working floor throughout organisations

Background: There is an increasing need for structured methods that encourage effective knowledge sharing and collaborations at the working floor to implement innovation strategies, especially in case of employer - employee relationships. <br/><br/>Objective: This research (master thesis) focused on knowledge sharing on the work floor during...

Towards design strategies for circular medical products

The framework of design for the circular economy is increasingly used in industry to improve product sustainability and decrease costs, and in academia various models have been developed to guide circular design. However, in the medical sector, although it generates a large amount of waste, application of circular design principles is...

Building on Mars: An Evolvable Design Strategy for the Architectural Engineer

Humans are going to Mars and the plan is to achieve this within the next couple of decades. In mission architectures the habitat is considered a sub-system in the overall mission’s system architecture. In current mission engineering, the crew’s psychology is barely considered in the design of the mission. In aerospace engineering, one refers to...

Architectural design education: in varietate unitas

A fascinating and rich landscape of personal views and approaches can be seen in architectural design and in architectural design education. This variation may be confusing for students. This paper focuses on the question: is the framework of generic elements that we developed for explicating the design process helpful to compare the...

A design tool for refurbishment: Generating industry specific design rules

This thesis presents the results of a single case study performed at Philips Refurbished Systems, focusing on a medical imaging system: interventional X-ray, which enables Image Guided Therapy (IGT). The goal of the study was to add value to the refurbishment activities at Refurbished Systems by developing design rules for refurbishment. This...