An engineering approach to development and marketing of a commercial product
- Authors: Küçük, Sakir.
- Date: 1999
- Subjects: New products , Industrial design , Product management
- Language: English
- Type: Masters Thesis
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/22368 , uj:16192
- Description: Abstract: The product development and marketing concept phase is one of the most important tasks facing companies. The main reason companies develop new products is simply to increase the sales and profits of the company and help achieve the goals of the company. The success of the new product depends on effective marketing strategics. I his research report \\ ill aim to emphasize that it is crucial for companies to modify their existing products or develop new products and marketing strategics in order to be able to survive or improve in today·s competitive business environment. It \\ ill also be emphasized that new products must be developed in an integrated fashion with the marketing to satisfy and meet customer needs. The applications of the methods and techniques of the process of development and marketing of a commercial product will be demonstrated on a Turkish blanket manufacturing company. "The South African blanket market" as the market place, "a blanket .. as the commercial product, and ··The Sesli Textile Company .. as the blanketmanufacturing company will be chosen in the case study. The results of the case study will be presented in an integrated manner with the literature study. l'he entire report will be based on an engineering approach to the development and marketing of a commercial product. This entails a focus being placed on the role of technical/engineering team members in the entire process. , M.Ing. (Engineering Management)
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An investigation into the utilisation of recycled plastics for design applications
- Authors: Gill, Andrew
- Date: 2014-01-14
- Subjects: Plastics - Recycling , Industrial design
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:7913 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/8803
- Description: M.Tech. (Interior Design) , In an endeavor to achieve, the activities of many industries will need to transform and design is no exception. Commercial design has played a substantial role in contributing towards waste-generation, pollution and the exhaustion of non-renewable resources. Fundamental to achieving sustainable development is the need to determine design's contribution to economic growth in relationship to social development and environmental preservation, as these issues are completely interdependent (and need to be considered as such) if sustainability is ever to be achieved. Although much theoretical information about sustainable design has been made available, little evidence exists to prove that this theory is being put into practice, specifically in South Africa. It is also unlikely that the solutions engineered in some of the more developed countries can simply be transferred into the context of a developing nation with its own very specific social, economic and environmental conditions. This seems to justify the need to research practical and contextualized methods of implementing sustainable design theory. The main research methodology implemented in this project has taken the form of applied or practice-based research, in order to determine the feasibility of implementing established ecological design theories. Initially, theoretical research was conducted to establish the principles of sustainable design; these principles were then contextualized according to South African specific conditions and manifested in a practical application in the design and manufacture of artifacts. A consumer sampling was also undertaken to determine consumer response and economic viability of these products...
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Applying information architecture in design thinking : ideating solutions to the wicked problem of addiction
- Authors: Hobbs, Jason Richard
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: Industrial design , Design and technology , Information technology , Information organization
- Language: English
- Type: Masters (Thesis)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/485650 , uj:44150
- Description: Abstract: This research project explores the use of Information Architecture (IA) in Design Thinking for the purposes of ideating solutions to wicked problems. A constructivist account of IA is advanced in this study offering new perspectives, distinct to those offered by the mainstream IA employed in digital design, heralding from Library and Information Science. This reframing of IA creates a new space to explore what value may be found lying dormant in the relationship between IA and DT, and Design in general. The Research Through Design (RTD) methodology serves to support the constructive nature of this inquiry. In RTD, the researcher operates both in the role of designer and researcher, executing and critically reflecting upon a design project. For this study, a design project was conducted to address the complex social problem of addiction as it manifests in Johannesburg, South Africa. A new form of IA, Conceptual IA (CIA), is notionally developed to observe and discuss IA when enacted in Ideation following the DT process-method. The findings and conclusions offered emerge from qualitative analysis of observations and reflection upon the design project’s enactment. Within its scope, the study reveals that IA, as reframed, can be understood as operating tacitly within design (and the world) as that which contains and transmits socio-ontological meaning, decoded, recoded and encoded in design. Explicit use of IA methods, tools and techniques greatly enhanced synthetic cognition across the whole of the DT process-method enacted. Furthermore, CIA conducted in Ideation provided the concept for a social systems solution central to a strategy design which synthetically resolved the challenges presented by the wicked problem of addiction. IA and design developed to realise the concept, as blueprints, describe how use of the system in the world triggers a transformation and transcendence of this concept: in use, the IA of the concept being embedded within the structural form of the designed object, comes to be a new socio-ontological phenomena. In this way, a (speculative) theoretical account is given for how an instrumental / ontological mediation of social reality may occur, at scale, by IA employed in Design. , M.A. (Design)
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Applying user-experience design to support Johannesburg high school educators teaching design thinking
- Authors: Steinhöbel, Erika Sophia
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Industrial design , Design and technology , Architecture and technology , Creative teaching
- Language: English
- Type: Masters (Thesis)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/447971 , uj:39285
- Description: Abstract: This research paper describes and reflects on the effectiveness of integrating Research through Design as both a methodology and Design Thinking in order to co-design a digital product with and for high school educators. In reference to this concern, the aim of this study is to explore how digital technology can be designed by applying User-experience Design (UXD) to support the teaching activities of educators teaching DT, so that they may become more confident and knowledgeable facilitators. The end result of this process was for an interactive digital platform aimed at introducing DT to SA teachers of art, design and technology. A Research through Design methodology is applied in this study within the specific contexts of a co-design project involving high school teachers in Johannesburg, South Africa. The study undertakes a human-centred design philosophy whereby users’ problems and experiences are seen as contextual and complex, therefore requiring that the researcher to have consideration and understanding before these problems can be resolved. The design process applied in this study therefore focused on gaining an understanding of the teachers’ experiences in order to design effective and empathetic technological solutions that will be meaningful and useful to the teachers... , M.A. (Multimedia)
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Design and development of a single household farming kit
- Authors: Brand, Kyle Graham
- Date: 2014-06-04
- Subjects: Industrial arts , Industrial design , Sustainable design - Agriculture , Family farms
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:11397 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/11035
- Description: M.Tech. (Industrial Design) , One of the greatest social problems we face as society as a whole and South Africa in particular, is food insecurity. Food insecurity manifests itself in many forms and has a dramatic impact on the wellbeing of people. People need food to survive, but often the food systems they rely on are vulnerable to price shocks and changes, which in turn diminishes their resilience. Local food systems are crucial in reducing vulnerability and improving food security. But often the tools used are not appropriate, especially for household farming. In this study design is used to bring about considered change in the area of household food security, by addressing the tools used for household farming. Household farming is not a typical focus for designers, but well-designed tools could have a dramatic influence on the ability of a household to have a more productive food garden therefore well designed tools is a valuable place for design to be applied. The design intervention of a Household Farming Kit (HFK) and its development is explored. The methods used for the design and development are human-centric in nature, but also acknowledge the opportunity for the designer to have a meaningful influence on the final outcome. The influence could be toward more environmentally sound farming practices. The process adopted used the development of a series of prototype iterations which were evaluated by participants to recommend the alteration or changing of the prototypes. Three phases of prototypes were developed and evaluated, with each building on the knowledge gained from the previous. These were tested predominantly in two locations: Noordgesig outside Johannesburg and Kanana in the North West province in South Africa. The evaluations by the farmers who participated in this study were essential in the development process, in order for the designs to be appropriate to their needs. This study had a very practical focus, with the development of the Household Farming Kit, but it also had a strong methodological focus, experimenting with methods used to design products in a developmental context. The successes and failures of the study are documented in order to contribute to the field of Industrial Design, specifically design research in the area of Design for Development.
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Developing new stylistic possibilities for African product design inspired by African cultural heritage
- Authors: Campbell, Angus Donald
- Date: 2012-07-31
- Subjects: Chair design , Industrial design
- Type: Thesis
- Identifier: uj:8888 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/5359
- Description: M.Tech. , This research project endeavours to explore and develop notions of ‘contemporary African design’. The project focuses on chair design with particular reference to the Senufo articulated chair from the Ivory Coast. In order to frame the practical research the separate histories of Western chairs and African chairs are examined for common ground. Ideas of cultural identity and style as a means of communicating an African identity to the West are explored. Transculturation and liminality are presented as alternative conceptual stances from which to overcome conceptual and theoretical problems inherent in the term ‘African design’. The research also examines the notion of communication in products and artefacts aiming at a better understanding of how products and artefacts conceived in one cultural context are likely to be interpreted by another. A general semiotic theory is used as a starting point providing a comparison to various other alternate and/or opposing theoretical approaches. A chair designed in the Western Modernist tradition, Hans Wegner’s 1949 Folding Chair, is used as a basis for illustrating the applicability of such theoretical approaches. A traditional Senufo articulated chair is then used as a basis to explore cross-cultural interpretation: the ways in which one culture interprets the artefacts of another and attaches new and different meanings to these artefacts because of different cultural assumptions, attitudes and values. Finally, the insights gained from the theoretical and cultural understanding of the chairs are used as a basis for putting into practise a hybrid method for design: that of incorporating craft and design and allowing the two approaches to inform one another. After a thorough elimination process one design is chosen, refined and prototyped, this choice being rooted in the theoretical findings in order to develop a new stylistic possibility for African product design inspired by African cultural heritage.
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In-context and ecology immersion for resilience : an exploration of the design of a household farming kit
- Authors: Brand, Kyle Graham
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: In-context immersion , Ecology immersion , Industrial design , Small-scale agriculture , Food security , Social impact design - South Africa - Johannesburg
- Type: Article
- Identifier: uj:6101 , ISBN ABC/</CDAB</BCE/C , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/12398
- Description: Human-Centred Design proposes the method of In-context Immersion or meeting people where they live, work and socialise as a method to gain new insights and opportunities for the designer (IDEO, 2013). This method as per the majority of empirical research tends to simplify complex situations in order to provide a set of criteria that can then guide a design intervention to such problems. This paper explores how it is important to not only understand the contextual situation of a problem, but also a much broader range of contexts and in uences which constitute the ecology of the problem. Ecology Immersion can be de ned over and above the designers’ immersion into a speci c context by the further discovery and exploration of other connected contexts. The designer is able to map a broader system by immersing her/himself in these interconnected contexts and hence foreseeing how a proposed intervention could interact in the greater ecology of the problem. An example could be the e ect the seemingly independent biological system and economic system could have on a small-scale agricultural project. This improved understanding then allows for the design intervention to have a better foundation in terms of the systems it relies on, which potentially aids the nal intervention’s resilience. This paper explores and criticises the design process of a household farming kit as an example of such a method. This critique will o er potential insight into future applications of this method in the eld of Industrial Design and its potential application in other design disciplines to encourage greater resilience.
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The development of a design for manufacture and assembly framework to support concurrent engineering
- Authors: Sibiya, Dumisani
- Date: 2013-05-27
- Subjects: Manufacturing processes - Design , Engineering design , Concurrent engineering , Industrial design , Production planning
- Type: Mini-Dissertation
- Identifier: uj:7544 , http://hdl.handle.net/10210/8402
- Description: M.Ing. (Engineering Management) , Manufacturing challenges originate from product design requirements that exceed available technology and manufacturing capabilities, or from assembly requirements that represent limitations to the ease at which product manufacture may occur. These challenges result in engineering designs having to be constantly modified to match technology or process capabilities. In order for manufacturing companies to attain competitiveness through their engineering design activities, adopting the design for manufacture and assembly philosophy is paramount. It is a philosophy that is capable of bridging the gap that exists in understanding manufacturing related challenges for more efficient and cost effective operations. Various design guidelines and considerations were evaluated to develop a design for manufacture and assembly framework, with the purpose of providing a common language between designers and the manufacturing engineers. Current manufacturing technologies were evaluated as a means of elaborating on the needs, challenges and opportunities in industry better. Data was collected to validate the framework by means of communication case studies between design departments, industry specialists and manufacturing workshops during site visits. The concept of the design for manufacture and assembly framework should have the potential of being applied on a global scale for companies, willing to outsource manufacturing work internationally.
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