Evaluation approaches are needed to ensure the development of effective design support. These approaches help developers ensure that their design support possesses the general design support characteristics necessary to enable designers to achieve their desired outcomes. Consequently, evaluating design support based on these characteristics ensures that the design support fulfils its intended purpose.

This work reviews design support definitions and identifies and describes 11 design support characteristics. The characteristics are applied to evaluate a proposed design support that uses additive manufacturing (AM) design artefacts (AMDAs) to explore design uncertainties. Product-specific design artefacts were designed and tested to investigate buildability limits and the relationship between surface roughness and fatigue performance of a design feature in a space industry component. The AMDA approach aided the investigation of design uncertainties, identified design solution constraints, and uncovered previously unknown uncertainties. However, the results provided by product-specific artefacts depend on how well the user frames their problem and understands their AM process and product. Hence, iterations can be required. Based on the evaluation of the AMDA process, setting test evaluation criteria is recommended, and the AMDA method is proposed.

Design thinking är ett tankesätt och en användarcentrerad metodik för att identifiera alternativ och lösningar på komplexa problem på ett kreativt och hållbart sätt.

Design thinking handlar till viss del om att tänka, men framförallt väldigt mycket om att göra och reflektera. Det handlar om att utveckla sitt kritiska, kreativa och reflexiva tänkande för att utforska och förstå användarens behov, skapa idéer och utveckla attraktiva och hållbara lösningar.

The accelerated rate of product development and design complexities offered by Additive Manufacturing (AM) has allowed for innovation in the space industry. However, the surface roughness of parts poses a challenge, as it impacts performance and is tied to design choices. Design tools for traditional manufacturing methods fall short in AM contexts, prompting the need for alternative design processes. This work proposes an experimental approach to design for AM investigation using design artefacts to explore a process-structure-property-performance relationship.

The compound nature of creativity entails the interplay of multiple cognitive processes, making it difficult to attribute creativity to a single neural signature. Divergent thinking paradigms, widely adopted to investigate creative production, have highlighted the key role of specific mental operations subserving creativity, such as inhibition of external stimuli, loose semantic associations, and mental imagery. Neurophysiological studies have typically shown a high alpha rhythm synchronization when individuals are engaged in creative ideation. Also, oculomotor activity and pupil diameter have been proposed as useful indicators of mental operations involved in such a thinking process. The goal of this study was to investigate whether beyond alpha-band activity other higher frequency bands, such as beta and gamma, may subserve divergent and convergent thinking and whether those could be associated with a different gaze bias and pupil response during ideas generation. Implementing a within-subjects design we collected behavioral measures, neural activity, gaze patterns, and pupil dilation while participants performed a revised version of the Alternative Uses Task, in which divergent thinking is contrasted to convergent thinking. As expected, participants took longer to generate creative ideas as compared to common ones. Interestingly, during divergent thinking participants displayed alpha synchronization along with beta and gamma desynchronization, more pronounced leftward gaze shift, and greater pupil dilation. During convergent thinking, an opposite pattern was observed: desynchronization in alpha and an increase in beta and gamma rhythm, along with a reduction of leftward gaze shift and greater pupil constriction. The present study uncovered specific neural dynamics and physiological patterns during idea generation, providing novel insight into the complex physiological signature of creative production.

This paper addresses the crucial need for engineering students to acquire both soft and hard skills for a successful career. While technical skills are essential, soft skills like communication, collaboration, problem-solving, leadership, and adaptability are equally vital. Traditional engineering education programs often neglect soft skill development, leaving students without structured guidance. This paper presents a strategic curriculum approach within an Industrial Design Engineering program that emphasises progressive skill development. It includes a competence profile and continuous self-assessment to encourage student reflection and growth. Additionally, a transformative process is introduced in a third-year capstone project, helping students identify and actively improve personal and interpersonal skills. The results underscore the importance of systematic soft skill development through reflective practice and assessment, offering valuable insights for engineering education.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is often considered to increase opportunities for creativity in design compared to traditional manufacturing methods. At the same time, it is suggested that regulated work can have a negative effect on engineers’ creative abilities, which are linked to three components of creativity (expertise, motivation, and creative thinking skills). Due to the ‘newness’ of AM, engineers need to broaden their expertise to fully exploit their creative potential while using AM. Previous research has presented support tools to assist engineers to understand the complexity of AM. A majority of such studies focus on novice engineers, rather than providing an understanding of how AM is involved in industrial practices. This paper follows three case studies from the space industry, a regulated industry, that aims to re-design a product for AM over a 21-month time period. The purpose is to explore how restrictions affect engineers’ opportunities to build AM expertise for creativity in a regulated industry. Results show the importance that case-specific aspects have on an engineer’s learning path for adopting AM. Engineers find themselves in a complex situation, with a conflict between being ‘safe’ or innovative, where innovation within such regulated industries is often compared to innovating ‘in a box’.

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) brings the possibility to manufacture innovative near-net-shape part designs. But unfortunately, some designed surfaces suffer from rough surface finish due to characteristics of the LPBF process. This paper explores trends in managing surface roughness and through a space industry case study, a proposed process that uses Additive Manufacturing Design Artefacts (AMDAs) is used to investigate the relationship between design, surface roughness and fatigue. The process enables the identification of design uncertainties, however, iterations of AMDA's can be required.