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 ‘richness’ of intermediate results in a design process can be used as at least part of this assessment. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of richness as a multi-level defined construct, to create a shared language for such an assessment. We created a three-part definition and tested its workability and value for designers. The results demonstrate the workability of considering richness as a multi-level defined construct. Its value for designers, then, is that assessing the richness of intermediate results can help to get a sense whether they are capturing the complexity of the design task. If not, this could be an explicit sign that more work is needed before moving towards the more resource-intensive stages. This first exploration can be built upon in various ways. ... Read more

The problem: Design challenges are becoming increasingly complex, amongst others because real life is getting more complex. Society is more interconnected than before and most problems occur in a variety of -quickly changing- shapes and forms, i.e. in different contexts. These contexts pose different requirements and often have interdependencies as well. How can design engineers respond to this rise in diversity of requirements and the likely interdependencies? To reduce the complexity and increased diversity the common response is simplification, e.g., choosing one context as scope of the design task. In a highly interconnected society this no longer suffices. The initially optimal solution creates a path dependency and lock-in that delays or hinders achieving impact on a large scale beyond the initial context. Research focus: The thesis focuses on the question what evolution in design engineering might be possible to address this problem. As a starting point, the oldest design characteristic, i.e. systematic variation, as pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci, is given a contemporary twist. It is suggested to be used before the design task is set in order to ensure multi-contextual perspectives of a large-scale issue. To provide further focus for this research, it revolves around an actual approach that does just that, called Context Variation by Design (CVD), and is mostly applied to basic quality-of-life issues. The research primarily has a design engineering angle, and additionally includes considerations and consequences for management and education. Evolution of design engineering alone, even with management considerations, cannot address the entire problem but might offer a contribution. Research approach: This thesis represents exploratory, therefore inductive, research. The extensive literature research resulted in ten theoretically backed propositions as key component of the thesis. Out of 23 available real-life situations to choose from, mostly MSc-level graduation, course and group assignments, seven were selected based on direct access to rich, high quality information. These cases were analysed and the main results were expressed as empirical findings, in relation to the ten propositions, 41 in total. Furthermore, three key defined constructs had been identified to explore more in depth: context, richness in the design space and adaptive architectures. Main results and conclusions: The analysis of the patterns of the empirical research reveals various signs that a design engineering approach that uses systematic variation before the design task is set, can deliver high quality, potentially superior results when dealing with large-scale (quality-of-life) issues. This was true in particular for cases where students executed full assignments, as opposed to short ones. Because the design result, i.e. an informed adaptive architecture, incorporated requirements from a variety of contexts, the additional effort to scale to these contexts is much smaller from a design engineering perspective. Such signs cannot be considered as (conclusive) evidence, and it was not the intention of this inductive thesis to deliver such results. More light has been shed on particular framings that might be conducive, and the specific interpretation of the key constructs, all resulting in a version 2.0 of CVD. The results can be elaborated upon in next steps. Next steps: The main suggested next steps including ‘bite size’ titles: “Revelling in richness” (further explore richness as a defined construct in the design space), “Going for Gold” (engage in long term commitments and broader partnerships to investigate actual multi-contextual implementation), “C’est le ton qui fait la musique” (explicitly verify framings that resonate with managers and others) and “Leave no Leonardo behind” (explore how using a multi-contextual approach can be used in education to boost the aptitude of design engineers-to-be). ... Read more

If a company aims to contribute to a better world it wants to achieve positive sustainability impact on a large scale. It should then foresee that this large, up till global, scale includes many different and often interconnected manifestations. The authors in this chapter discuss a design approach that takes these different manifestations and connections into account from the start. The resulting architecture for the innovation (product, service and business model) is then more adaptive towards different requirements and settings. This positively affects the scalability for implementation and thus impact in multiple markets. The authors also discuss the implications for the management approach needing to be in line with this design approach, in particular regarding goal setting and level of (de)centralisation. They encourage practitioners as well as researchers to further explore this alignment. ... Read more

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 success has been achieved and a path has been set out. A range of authors have suggested ways to address variations during the design process. This paper contributes to exploring this notion of variation by presenting an approach that emphasises contextual variation early on, clarifying the design task before the design process, in a narrow sense, begins. This enables designers to seize opportunities that reveal themselves before a final path is set. Based on real-life cases and discussion of existing literature, the value of this approach for an industrial designer’s arsenal is explored and guidance for next steps is offered. ... Read more

A wide range of Improved Cook Stoves have been developed, designed to maximize efficiency and to minimize emissions. Nevertheless, successful adoption failed in many cases, due to a lack of proper understanding of people's actual needs and instead (too much) focus on technical functionality (efficiency & emissions). The aim of the project described in this paper is to develop a new cook stove for urban households in Africa, which matches with local cooking habits and which at the same time is scalable which means it should match with multiple cooking habits and cooking ecosystems. In order to address both issues, two design approaches were combined: People – Technology Matching (PTM) and Context Variation by Design (CVD). The objective for the PTM part was to map the characteristics of cooking by measuring and observing preparation of the most typical local food dishes. At the same time, in order to overcome the tension between context specific solutions and scalability, we applied the Context Variation by Design (CVD) approach. Via this approach insights from different contexts are intentionally combined early on in the design process to design a stove-architecture that can be adopted in and easily adapted to multiple contexts. For this purpose, PTM research was done in two contexts: Uganda and Ghana. The insights collected from the two contexts were brought together and resulted in a stove architecture that is adaptive to both contexts. The resulting prototype performed well in technical tests. We illustrate and discuss some notable features of the adaptive design in the paper. ... Read more

In recent years, awareness that design students need to be better equipped to deal with complexity has increased. The practical implications for design education are less evident. While students appreciate explicit methods and tools, we argue that they have to learn to work with ambiguity and interconnections as well. We performed research on the differences that advanced design students experience in terms of process and outcome when switching from self-chosen familiar tool-supported design methods to using a less familiar and less prescriptive multi-contextual approach. The latter represents our chosen manifestation of possible real-life complexity in design challenges. The reflections show a diversity of non-parametric patterns. In general, the intentional multi-context approach was appreciated for its positive effect on encouraging creativity and quality of the results. The reflections raise several points of attention when addressing the concept of complexity with design students in education curricula. ... Read more

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-system”. In terms of technology, (biomass) gasifier stoves look promising on all three sustainability dimensions (people, planet, profit) but have not been adopted on a substantial scale across cultures and regions either. We therefore used a design approach that takes multiple contexts (target groups) into account and compared the performance of a gasifier stove that was developed following this multi-context approach with four previous gasifier versions. With the comparative assessment using criteria well beyond mere technological performance we found that it performed better than these versions as well as than what could be expected based on historical learning, while providing additional systemic advantages. These results encourage verification of the value of the multi-context approach in more settings while providing clues for refinement of the assessment method. ... Read more

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 are intentionally combined early on in the process to develop solution directions. This creates a richer solution space than when contextual variations are developed sequentially. The rich solution space is then the basis for these contextual variations which might include connections and synergy between them. We discuss several real-life project examples that demonstrate that this approach indeed creates a basis for better solutions. In particular, confronting insights from different contexts at an early stage reveals new solution directions. To fully capture the potential the approach needs to be applied throughout the design process. ... Read more

The world is complex. Amongst others, this means that many elements are interconnected. When designing solutions, this complexity is often seen as cumbersome, resulting in (over) simplification of the issue at hand. This leads to solutions that are optimised for one specific context. Especially when these solutions are aimed at tackling large scale development issues, redoing the process every time when a new context is entered is very resource intensive. A multi-context design approach that was recently developed, takes another premise: if multiformity of a design challenge is acknowledged from the start, this encourages to intentionally bring together insights from multiple contexts. This collective intelligence results in design solutions with higher quality that also allow for quicker scaling and adaptation to multiple contexts thereby achieving more impact against lower overall costs. The first intended result, higher quality, has been tested in various set ups. The most elaborated experiment was conducted with junior designers for a medical company. The main question was: “To which extent does a multi-context approach result in higher quality of design concepts?” Starting from the same issue (maternal health care, a portable ultrasound device), three groups developed concept directions for solutions, with differences in the sources of insights that were provided. All assessments that were performed point in the same direction, being that the results from the multi-context group were more creative and relevant. Several lessons were obtained about the execution, which are translated into recommendations for more and better experiments and actual use in industry settings. ... Read more