ASIT—a problem solving strategy for education and eco-friendly sustainable design

There is growing recognition of the role teaching and learning experiences in technology education can contribute to Education for Sustainable Development. It appears, however, that in the Technology Education classroom little or no change has been achieved to the practice of designing and problem solving strategies oriented towards sustainable design. Brainstorming, Brainwriting, SCAMPER, Metaphoric Thinking, Outrageous Thinking, Mind Mapping and other problem-solving strategies used in the classroom could be suitable for eco-design, however, there appears to be little research data on their use. This paper examines and presents the ‘Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking’ (ASIT) system as an eco-design strategy. ASIT is derived from a more complex engineering-based problem solving strategy known as TRIZ (the Russian acronym for The Theory of the Solution of Inventive Problems). Drawing on Stable’s (in press) call for new approaches to address sustainable design and achieve solutions through Technology Education, this article traces the history of TRIZ and the development of ASIT. It then argues that the ASIT strategy can be an effective methodology to be taught and used in the Technology Education classroom to solve problems in the ‘eco’ or sustainable design context. Several design scenarios have been included to illustrate how ASIT can deliver eco-design solutions to problems. These examples demonstrate the flexibility of the methodology and the diverse range of applications in which ASIT can be applied.     

Designers as Teachers and Learners: Transferring Workplace Design Practice into Educational Settings

The nature of the design process and how to develop this skill in novice designers has been of considerable interest to technology educators. The relationship between workplace and school-based design is one area in which a need for further research has been identified by Hill and Anning (2001, International Journal of Technology and Design Education 11, 111–136). The research project described in this article had two aims. The first was to compare the workplace practice of six experienced designers with their practice when working on a technological assessment task as part of a pre-service teacher education programme. The second aim was to investigate their experience on teaching practicum in developing design skills with secondary school students. Findings from the research are described and the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for teaching technology education.     

Teaching science through designing technology

This paper is a review of the literature related to teaching science through designing technology. The premise of this method is that designing technology presents the students with the context through which they can apply the science concepts they learned and thus enhancing their understanding of these concepts. Despite the promise of this method, teachers attempting it were faced by many challenges such as: (1) teachers did not have a grasp of the complex relationship between science and technology and assumed that technology was simply applied science, (2) the students were not able to transfer their learning of science to designing technology, (3) teachers did not have a deep understanding of the design process and tried to teach it as a linear, context-free process without regard to the context of the problem. The purpose of this paper is to extract from the literature a better understanding of teaching science through designing technology and the elements that teachers need to satisfy in order to increase their chances of successfully implementing this method in the classroom.     

A service design perspective on the stakeholder engagement journey during B2B innovation: Challenges and future research agenda

Innovation in business-to-business (B2B) contexts deals with highly dynamic, complex, and heterogeneous constellations of stakeholders with a diversity of goals, motives, and capabilities that further challenge successful management of B2B innovation processes and outcomes. Complex challenges, such as sustainability and digitization trends, push these B2B firms to embrace new innovation methods that help them manage disruptive change. Service design thinking has emerged as an innovation management practice emphasizing a human-centered innovation process of user interactions, creativity, and learning mindsets. In this article, we aim to evaluate the challenges and develop a research agenda on how service design can effectively enable stakeholders' engagement during the B2B innovation process. We argue that to advance service design opportunities for stakeholder engagement, we need to address the unique complexities and challenges of stakeholder engagement during innovation from a systemic and dynamic process perspective. From a systemic perspective, we zoom in on the building blocks of stakeholder engagement and address multi-level stakeholder engagement platforms (i.e., innovation networks). From a dynamic process perspective, we treat stakeholder engagement as an emerging process and zoom in on the temporal and relational connections and hybrid orchestration to allow for both structural and emerging stakeholder engagement during innovation. We develop a stakeholder engagement journey in which we integrate service and innovation stages and propose how service design activities can support and facilitate the aforementioned challenges and complexities. Finally, we identify concrete research questions and, accordingly, develop a research agenda for future research on stakeholder engagement in B2B innovation trajectories.     

Line by line,part by part: collaborative sketching for designing

While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were given an authentic design assignment involving three detailed tasks, one of which was 2D visualisation by sketching. Adopting a micro-analytical approach, we analysed the video-recorded visualisation session to understand how teams used sketching to collaborate and to generate and develop design solutions. To that end, we set three research questions: (1) What ways of collaborative working are reflected in actions of sketching? (2) In what ways do sequences of collaborative sketching contribute to designing? (3) What kinds of collaborative sequences of sketching advance designing? Our analysis identified three collaborative ways of sketching (co-ordinated, collective and disclosed) and confirmed that sketching is an important facilitator of mutual appropriation, adaption and adoption. Next, we identified three ways of contributing to designing, as well as three functions and six capacities for advancing designing. Our analysis shows that sketching can lead to invaluable advances in designing, although each team had its own way of using and benefiting from sketching. We further consider that the teams’ diverse sketching processes and rich content owed, at least in part, to the task structure and imposed constraints. We continue to see sketching as an important design tool, one among many.     

Design Cognition in a Building Expedition

In architecture courses, the bridging of design learning and construction is a constant challenge for educators. When designing the construction details of a building, students lack the field/site experience of the construction process and an understanding of the problems and solutions associated with erecting a building. The degree of buildability of the student design proposal is limited by classroom teaching environments as it is difficult for students to develop design cognition between the assembly process and the design of constructional elements for assembly. The paper describes an experiment in practical learning to develop this design cognition in a building expedition. Student design cognition was evaluated with team-based and individual decisions in overcoming problems in assembly, created by the design of the structural connections used. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Making explicit in design education: generic elements in the design process

In general, designing is conceived as a complex, personal, creative and open-ended skill. Performing a well-developed skill is mainly an implicit activity. In teaching, however, it is essential to make explicit. Learning a complex skill like designing is a matter of doing and becoming aware how to do it. For teachers and students therefore, it will be helpful to make the design process explicit. In this paper, a conceptual framework is developed to be more explicit about the design process. Based on research of the design process, on differences between novices and expert designers, and on personal experience in design education practice, five generic elements in the design process are distinguished: (1) experimenting or exploring and deciding, (2) guiding theme or qualities, (3) domains, (4) frame of reference or library, (5) laboratory or (visual) language. These elements are generic in the sense that they are main aspects and always present in the complex, personal, creative and open-ended design process.     

Perspectives on pupil creativity in design and technology in the lower secondary curriculum in England

This paper is based on work carried out as part of a research study into the professional practices of secondary design and technology teachers in England. It focused on fostering creativity or teaching for creativity as defined by the Robinson Report (1999, All our futures: creativity, culture and education. London: Department for Education and Employment (DfEE)) for pupils aged 11–14 years. The overall research question that drove this study was “to what extent can teachers influence the creativity of pupils aged 11–14 years in design and technology lessons?” The paper provides the basis used to generate a unique theoretical three-feature model or framework that can be used to explore creativity within an educational context.The findings of three investigations in the study are presented in this paper. The first and second investigations looked at what could be learnt from the professional practices of art and design and design and technology teachers and the views of four ‘expert’ teachers known for their ability to develop the creative potential of their pupils. The data is discussed under emerging themes and it is used to inform specific criteria in the evolving theoretical three-feature model for creativity. The model is then used to analyse the data from the third classroom based investigation and the findings are discussed under the emerging themes to help identify the issues related to fostering creativity within the design and technology classroom.This paper discusses the implications of the research for classroom practice and suggests that, as creativity is a complex, multi-faceted concept and process, the theoretical three-feature model and related criteria evolved in the study provides a sound framework to explore creativity within an educational context. As a tool it helps identify examples of good practice and highlight areas that require further attention by teachers aiming to foster their pupils’ creativity. It is suggested that design and technology teachers have lessons to learn from the practices of their art and design colleagues and ‘expert’ design and technology teachers. It is concluded that there is a need for greater understanding by teachers of their implicit theories regarding teaching, learning and creativity. A wider use could be made of the breadth of strategies outlined by the ‘expert’ teachers. This would help address the weakness identified in the school based study and strengthen classroom practice when teaching for creativity.     

Research in technology education: looking back to move forward … again

In 2013 I published, in this Journal, a review of journals and conference publications in Technology Education from 2006 to 2010 as one measure of the nature of research that was being conducted in the area (Williams in Int J Technol Des Educ 23(1):1–9, 2013). An element of that review was a prediction of trends, from the findings, to speculate about what research areas may develop and become more significant and more common in the future. This prediction was integrated with personal experiences and understandings to result in a speculative discussion of future trends. This Research Note represents an extended review, both in terms of the journals and conferences covered, and the time period to include 2011–2013, in order to evaluate those predictions and refine possible future trends, and to answer the research question: What are the developments and trends in Technology Education research? It is hoped that this will be useful to researchers in the area of Technology Education who are planning research, and to stimulate discussion about the research that is needed in this area.     

The Nature of Technology for Design

This paper reviews ideas from design and technology and science education and discusses knowledge, values and skills as aspects of technology in order to demonstrate that technology for design cannot be simply associated with a knowledge component of technology. The paper highlights the linguistic challenges in expressing issues in this area and the philosophical difficulty that the nature of cognitive modelling means that some aspects may be impossible to express using language. Values and a designerly way of knowing and the nature of technological skills are discussed in order to establish their relationship to technology for design. Prior studies concerning technology and designing have focused on engineering and science-based design areas. A research agenda in relation to the proposed broader interpretation of technology for design is discussed, which demonstrates that such research must ultimately be interdisciplinary. Nevertheless, initial steps which could be taken by design researchers are suggested.     

Exploring the differences in performance measurement between research and development: evidence from a multiple case study

Researchers and practitioners have recently paid great attention to research and development (R&D) performance measurement, although it is acknowledged to be a very challenging task because of R&D intrinsic uncertainty and complexity levels. In this paper, the problem of designing a performance measurement system (PMS) for R&D activities is addressed; specifically, we investigate if and how the design of the PMS is influenced by the type of activity it is applied to, namely Basic and Applied Research or new product development (NPD). We first develop a theoretical framework that comprises the main constitutive elements of a PMS for R&D. Then the framework is used for supporting a multiple case study analysis involving eight Italian technology-intensive firms. The research results show that the criteria for designing the constitutive elements of the PMS are radically different in Basic and Applied Research and NPD. The reasons behind the observed dissimilarities in the design criteria are widely discussed in the paper, as well as their implications for R&D managers.     

PLANNING IN AMBIGUOUS CONTEXTS: THE DILEMMA OF MEETING NEEDS FOR COMMITMENT AND DEMANDS FOR LEGITIMACY

This paper argues that ambiguity of context manifested in pressures for legitimacy and commitment affect planning processes. Ambiguity arises from multiple conflicting constituencies and the lack of direct control over resources. Using nonprofit and entrepreneurial organizations as examples of organizations facing ambiguous contexts, we examine their planning practices to develop an understanding of the relationship between commitment, legitimacy, and planning. From this analysis, we articulate a managerial dilemma: the need to use informality and vagueness to gain commitment from diverse interests, and the need to demonstrate formalization of managerial practices to acquire legitimacy from critical resource suppliers. Using elements of this dilemma, we present a new planning framework for organizations in ambiguous contexts that recognizes planning as a strategy for resource acquisition rather than a strategy for resource allocation.     

Why Customers Value Self‐Designed Products: The Importance of Process Effort and Enjoyment*

This study analyzes which factors prompt customers to attribute value to products they design themselves using mass‐customization (MC) toolkits. The assumption that self‐design delivers superior customer value is fundamental to the concept of MC toolkits and can be found in almost any conceptual work in this field. However, spectacular failures reinforce the practical relevance of developing a deeper understanding of why and when MC toolkits generate value for customers—and when they do not. Research to date has assumed that the closer fit between the self‐designed product's characteristics and the preferences of the customer is the dominant source of value. In this research, it is asked whether the enjoyment and perceived effort of the self‐design process have an additional impact on the perceived value of self‐designed products. This question is interesting because one could argue that a rational actor would hardly be willing to pay ex post for an economic good already consumed. The hypotheses are tested on 186 participants designing their own scarves with an MC toolkit. After completing the process, they submitted binding bids for “their” products in Vickrey auctions. Therefore, real buying behavior, not merely stated intentions, is observed. The present study finds that the subjective value of a self‐designed product (i.e., one's bid in the course of the auction) is indeed impacted not only by the preference fit the customer expects it to deliver but also by (1) the process enjoyment the customer reports, (2) the interaction of preference fit and process enjoyment, and (3) the interaction of preference fit and perceived process effort. In addition to its main effect, preference fit can be interpreted as a moderator of the value‐generating effect of process evaluation: in cases where the outcome of the process is perceived as positive (high preference fit), the customer also interprets process effort as a positive accomplishment, and this positive effect adds (further) value to the product. It appears that the perception of the self‐design process as a good or bad experience is partly constructed on the basis of the outcome of the process. In the opposite case (low preference fit), effort creates a negative effect that further reduces the subjective value of the product. Likewise, process enjoyment is amplified by preference fit, although enjoyment also has a significant main effect, which means that regardless of the outcome, customers attribute higher value to a self‐designed product if they enjoy the process. In a way, this effect resembles of the classic story of Tom Sawyer and the fence, in which Tom manages to “frame” the tedious chore of whitewashing a fence as a rare opportunity—thus persuading his friends to pay him for letting them work. Manufacturers designing an MC system therefore are advised to designing MC toolkits in a way that they elicit positive affective reactions that make their customers value their work.     

The design and development of creative instructional materials: the role of domain familiarity for creative solutions

The design and development processes of instructional materials might be considered simple and clear because the pre-established instructional goals can lead the way. However, in practice, there are lots of issues to be considered during these processes. The quality of the material, appropriate visual design, usability, and acceptable amount of cognitive load are some of these issues. On the other hand, an instructional material needs to be as original as possible. In this study, we focused on the creativity of the instructional materials designed and developed by second year students from the Computer Education and Instructional Technologies (CEIT) department. We divided students into two groups: (1) CEIT students designing and developing materials about Information Technology (IT); (2) CEIT students designing and developing materials about Math. The main aim of this study is to understand how CEIT students’ instructional materials differ when they design and develop materials, which are out of their field of experience. In other words, we tried to compare how the creativity of materials change when students create materials with familiar domain (IT) in comparison to unfamiliar domain (Math). Students worked on ten instructional materials such as digital story, animation, and worksheet for 14 weeks. The materials of students were evaluated in terms of creativity, and then they were interviewed. The students worked in groups of 4–5, and during the material development period, we as researchers observed and took notes about the whole process. The findings indicated that materials developed in familiar domain were higher in creativity than those of the unfamiliar. Students’ explanations of creativity and their evaluations about the process helped us to understand the reasons of the produced materials’ creativeness. Technical skills, authentic contributions, material type, and the boundaries of the content or familiarity were found as the primary factors affecting the design and development of creative instructional materials.     

Supporting conceptual understandings of and pedagogical practice in technology through a website in New Zealand

This article reports on the up-date and development of an on-line resource to support of teachers’ conceptual understandings and pedagogical practice in New Zealand. Techlink is a website dedicated to supporting technology teachers, students and those with an interest in technology education. This research documents part of a Ministry of Education initiative to develop materials to support teaching and learning in technology education. The research was conducted by educational researchers contracted through Technology Education New Zealand the professional subject association. This research was a component of a larger contract with an overall aim of improving student achievement particularly at Years 12 and 13, the final 2 years of schooling in New Zealand. The aims of the initiative reported in this article were to provide ongoing evaluation of the effectiveness of the materials developed by the writing team, to support teacher shifts in understanding and pedagogical practice. This article gives an overview of the 3 year research study, focussing on teachers and teacher educators perceptions of Techlink as a professional development resource. An iterative process was used to critique and give feedback on existing and developed materials. The article also discusses enhancements made to ensure that the resource reflected the needs of technology teachers and The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007).     

Effective technology and design teaching: getting it right in the classroom

Technology and design was added to the Northern Ireland curriculum in September 1992 and through it, teachers seek to address the need for pupils to understand the ever-changing man-made world by developing skills and understanding in its four elements of designing, communicating, manufacturing and the use of energy and control. To be effective in attaining these goals, it is important that teachers allow pupils to have a voice in their learning. They should do this by taking account of pupil responses to the tasks they issue and using those responses as a basis for making choices about instruction and support strategies. This is particularly important in technology and design as pupils need to interpret instructions in light of their design ideas. This paper outlines how three case studies of technology and design teaching were used to identify a range of teaching and learning strategies and evaluate them for their potential to create a learning dialogue with pupils. Drawing on aspects of the effective teaching debate, this learning dialogue was then applied to how teachers exploited pupil histories, managed a range of collaboration strategies and provided effective task orientation. The case studies were based on observations, interviews and content analysis of work over a complete design-and-make project in each school. The paper outlines three continua for effectiveness in each of the three areas observed. The first continuum shows that teachers need a more individualised view of building on pupil histories, the second outlines a range of strategies for the management of pupil collaboration in learning and the third suggests that pupils need to be orientated into complex tasks in ways that support a progressively increasing level of independence in their thinking.     

A conceptual model for knowledge dimensions and processes in design and technology projects

The present study sheds new light on the knowledge dimensions and processes that occur when designing new concepts and prototypes in higher education. In particular, this study aims to develop the conceptual understanding of activities and processes that help students to gain new knowledge and understanding while designing new products and services. I employed two data collection phases among undergraduate students with qualitative abductive data analyses in order to create a conceptual framework for understanding how new knowledge is created and managed in students’ social interactions. This framework also enables us to distinguish the user, business, technological and methodological knowledge dimensions that constitute the elemental perspectives for design processes. This study emphasises the need for students to use diverse methods to gain new knowledge for inventing and designing new technological solutions.