Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

AHFE International

Accelerating Open Access Science in Human Factors Engineering and Human-Centered Computing

Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

book-cover

Editors: Evangelos Markopoulos, Ravindra S. Goonetilleke, Yan Luximon

Topics: Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Publication Date: 2023

ISBN: 978-1-958651-50-6

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003984

Articles

Designing the drivers to boost Digital Creativity and enable Digital Maturity

With the world rapidly changing and the accelerated growth of emerging digital technologies, creativity has become more fundamental than ever before (Corazza, 2017). We live in a society where the centrality of humans in the future will strongly rely on their creative abilities as those who do not creatively innovate risk failure in any domain. Today, emerging digital technologies are reshaping individuals and society and, consequently, creativity is co-evolving too becoming Digital Creativity (Lee and Chen, 2015). We refer to Digital Creativity as the ability to creatively and strategically apply digital technologies to innovate, thereby harnessing human-centred technological innovation to solve complex problems (Bruno, 2021). This ability requires humans to manage a creative design process and develop new Digital Creative Abilities, including, among others, the ability to communicate and collaborate with others to solve complex problems, to understand the cultural and social potential of emerging digital technologies.In this transitional era, design plays the role of a guide by enabling and empowering people’s creative and design skills and mindset, educating them to face the complex digital transformation. Design education should train future professionals, both designers and engineers, to support companies in achieving Digital Maturity which requires adjusting and implementing the entire organization, including human capital, to continuously adapt to an evolving digital landscape. Therefore, the nurture and development of Digital Creative Abilities (DCAs) is becoming a compulsory step for design and engineering education. This is the purpose the Digital Creativity for Digital Maturity (DC4DM) educational model was conceived for. It aims to up-skill new digital talent - defined as Digital Maturity Enablers - enhancing their DCAs that contribute to the creative design process and empowering them to generate innovative and ever-lasting technological solutions. Within the model, 24 DCAs are collected and grouped along four main dimensions - namely Cognitive, Cross Functional Team, Digital, and Strategic Vision - according to the four key practices that require companies to increase their digital maturity level. As educators, the main research question that moved us was: how can we concretely train and develop these DCAs to educate the digital talents of the future to face contemporary challenges and harness digital transformation opportunities? Indeed, the DCAs at issue are numerous and, in most cases, can be exercised simultaneously performing specific activities. Hence the need to cluster such essential DCAs according to their underlying overlaps. A three-day co-design workshop, called Bootcamp, conducted with around 20 people among educators, researchers, and designers, experts in digital technologies, design futures, and digital ethics, helped us identify the most important groups of DCAs to be addressed in order to create educational activities to successfully train Digital Maturity Enablers empowering their Digital Creativity. The creative abilities related to ethical, sustainable, and future thinking are essential to steering the ongoing digital transformation. Thus, Digital Maturity Enablers should be aware of the importance of such abilities and consider them as actual “drivers” of change. The paper will present the process adopted and the results of the bootcamp which are six Drivers defined as clusters of DCAs that individuals need to acquire to become more aware professionals. Drivers provide people with essential abilities related to digital sustainability, sense-giving, technology foresight, ethics of digital tech, cross-functional collaboration, and complexity. Each driver has a learning objective that helps educators to provide and create educational activities to train the DCAs included in them. After a few iterations carried out during the bootcamp, drivers have been consequently refined and included in the Digital Maturity Toolkit to be tested in three Learning Labs with over 120 students from design, engineering, and business faculties.

Marita Canina, Carmen Bruno, Eva Monestier

Conference Proceedings

Fostering creativity to Design Students as a problem-solving process for climate change

According to the UN, creativity is a crucial factor to ensure a better world and recognized as a fundamental tool to further develop other abilities and problem-solving skills. Nevertheless, this requires individual curiosity, an open-mind, imagination, problem solving skills and a willingness to take action. Human activity is causing planetary climate change, thus causing destruction, and generating negative consequences for mankind. The explored question is whether creativity can address climate change issues, as regards to innovation, and consequently foster a preferred outcome. This approach provided insights on how students address a given challenge, using creativity and design innovation processes to address issues and create a viable outcome.The UN general secretary acknowledged that education encourages people to change attitudes and behaviours, helping them make informed decisions. This requires equity, inclusion, and relevance, towards the development of prosperous societies inhabiting a healthy planet. Whatever society invests on education, it will return onto society itself. In a classroom, young people can be taught the impact of global warming and learn how to adapt to climate change. Education empowers all people, but especially motivates the young to act. (Guterres, 2022).Designers are at the forefront of those able, and committed, to accomplish change. In addition, design education has significant importance addressing not only design issues but also climate change issues, fostering a viable sustainable change, towards the development of sustainable products and services. This, nonetheless, requires adaptation, resilience, and clear communication to a specific audience conveying a desired message. Design needs to incorporate sustainable practices, focusing on product life cycle, energy consumption, standardization, maintenance, repair, overhaul, reuse, and easy recycling. Thus, reducing waste and using the limited planetary resources.Design students learn by observing, listening, and mostly by doing, encouraged with good examples, hands-on experience, and supported with constructive feed-back. Active teaching methodologies require teachers to act as mediators, encouraging and challenging students to research and acquire knowledge thought applied practice, whereas individually or in group learning, constructing knowledge, exploring, in a process of creation, connection, and transformation.Mitigation of climate change requires global and local action, not only concerning greenhouse gases and natural resources management, but especially regarding complex social behaviours that require a shift towards sustainability.This exploratory research brings insight on higher education design students addressing changes and its implications with Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodologies, addressing design consequences, using creativity as a transformation tool in an interdisciplinary process in a fast-changing world that requires a paradigm shift.

Leonardo Springer

Conference Proceedings

Exploiting the innovation potential of medium-sized mechanical engineering companies through the practical application of agile methods

Innovations have become a decisive competitive advantage. Companies must find ways to develop and establish new and, above all, suitable products, and processes even faster. Added to this are the ever-increasing product complexity, continuously rising customer requirements and a great deal of uncertainty due to constantly and sometimes radically changing market requirements. For this reason, agile methods are now being discussed even among established and successful companies in the classic mechanical and plant engineering sector to increase innovative strength and flexibility. However, due to the traditionally rather conservative orientation of the processes, the existing agile models quickly reach their limits. To combine the advantages of conventional and agile product development, hybrid process models are used, which are, however, mostly very complex and thus lose an essential advantage, the simplicity in application. The use of these models even requires a high degree of methodological competence, which medium-sized companies rarely have compared to large companies. To nevertheless make the advantages of agile models available to medium-sized companies and thus enable them to exploit their high innovation potential, a simple process model is required. The solution developed specifically for this purpose combines the simplicity of agile process models with the long-term planning of conventional models. It was developed in cooperation with a medium-sized mechanical engineering company, or its processes and requirements, which is active in the field of hydraulics. A survey of the company's development managers revealed that there is a need to adapt the existing procedure for generating innovations. However, new procedures must be introduced gradually, function in parallel with the established procedure, and be reversible if necessary. Therefore, the focus is on uncomplicated entry of developers into the application of agile methods. The model assumes no prior knowledge of agile methods and can therefore be easily applied to individual projects. It allows companies an easy entry into agile product development of physical products without having to adapt basic process flows and interfaces. The unique selling point of the model is the strict separation of the agile and plan-driven elements. Guided by simple rules, processes, roles and basic principles, the hybrid process model is quick and easy to understand. The development team is decoupled from the planning process and can focus on the product, its incremental iterative development, and the creative problem-solving process. To serve the company's interfaces and coordinate the long-term planning process, a planning team is used to plan milestones, stages, and sprints for the development team. The practicality and the ease of application of the agile elements in the development team were demonstrated in a pilot project. The consistent application of the model results, among other things, in improved communication in the development team, a rapid response to changes of any kind, and avoids waste due to context changes, waiting times, the unnecessary distribution of knowledge and information, and the costly procurement of information. The extent to which the consistent application of the model improves effectiveness and efficiency in product development projects cannot be conclusively clarified. To determine these factors, hybrid and conventional development projects must be monitored and compared.

Thomas Weinhauser, Sophie Steinmaßl, Andreas Eursch

Conference Proceedings

Needs Matter: A Detailed Typology of Fundamental Needs for Human-Centered Design

The relevance of human needs is generally recognized in human-centered design research and practice. However, a challenge of working with needs is that the word “need” can be interpreted in various ways, which can hinder effective communication and collaboration. Need typologies, in such cases, can serve as a shared language by providing an overview of distinct human needs. Building on a design-focused typology of thirteen fundamental needs, this paper introduces a detailed version in which two complementary but distinct facets explain each need. We envision this fine-grained vocabulary of basic human needs can support initiatives in human-centered design research and practice, particularly facilitating and enriching conversations among people from different backgrounds. Furthermore, we propose three directions for future research on this topic.

Siyuan Huang, Pieter Desmet

Conference Proceedings

Value oriented design of vehicles along emotional personality structures and character traits of customers

Buying a vehicle is a highly emotional decision process. In addition to functional requirements, elements that reflect emotional and personal values are crucial for the buying decision. Due to constantly upcoming technological inventions, trends and the increasing smartification of products, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to identify a specific target user group and transfer their requirements successful into a vehicle design. The containment of the target group usually based on demographic data like age, income, place of residence etc. But the psychographic characterization is often only based on subjective assessment of the user information. For example, a lot of product developer define emotional characteristics of the target group in the form of personas or mood boards based on experiential knowledge. This leads to a bias in the soft factors of a target group conditioned by the individual perception of each product developer and is therefore prone to error. Currently there is a lack of methodical procedures for translating customer values into vehicle elements. Therefore, the questions arise, how the value profile of target groups can be defined on a data basis and how vehicle characteristics can be derived from it.MethodologyTo determine the values and character traits of a target group, the emotion-cluster "Limbic Types" invented by the psychologist Hans Georg Häusel are combined with demographic information. Limbic Types are a condensation of the complex emotional personality structures and consist out of four different types: Dominance, Harmony, Stimulance and Balance. Parallel to this, the “Elements of Value Pyramid” as described by from Bain & Company – which consists of four levels: “Functional”, “Emotional,” “Life Changing” and “Social Impact” – is being transferred to vehicle features. Applied to automotive products, this results in functional values such as "Driver Assistance Systems”, emotional values like “stress reducing elements”, personal values like “Motivation” and social added values like “sharing the vehicle”. Correlations between the limbic types and the vehicles values provide insights on which vehicle characteristics are related to which personal character traits. To further specify the target groups, information about personalization preferences, sustainability requirements, technology affinity and trends sensitivity were also considered. ApplicationTo avoid neglecting cultural differences, a quantitative online survey is conducted with more than 5.000 respondents five intercontinentally distributed countries (Germany, Italy, America, China and South Korea). The individual Limbic type of each participant was determined by using a Limbic Quick Test at the beginning of the survey, consisting of eight questions tied into a story. The entire questionnaire consists out of 30 questions and takes an average of 12 minutes to complete. In order to receive only representative answers, incomplete questionnaires or questionnaires of participants who were 70% faster or 150% slower than scheduled were sorted out. Results and DiscussionPreliminary results already show significant differences between countries and between Limbic types. Within the countries, general trends have been identified. For example, all Limbic types in Germany prefer significantly more often functionalities to reduce costs. Compared to that, all Chinese Limbic types tend to choose functions that reflect the quality of the product. Examining only the differences between the Limbic types, it becomes apparent that 62.7% of the German Dominance types prefer stress-reducing elements in the vehicle. In turn, Italian Dominance types chose with a frequency of 45.6% most often trend-oriented elements. From the data it can also be concluded, which combinations of elements are chosen significantly often. For example, Italian Harmony types who choose elements to reduce risks are also very likely to choose stress-reducing elements. Whereas Chinese Harmony types will most likely choose elements that reflect quality in combination with fun and entertainment features. Furthermore, correlations were made for the different Limbic types and culture-specific-preferences In addition, “personalization”, “importance of sustainability” and “attitudes toward new technologies” will be surveyed.

Sebastian Stegmüller, Antonio Ardilio, Franziska Braun

Conference Proceedings

Anatomical Landmark-Guided Deformation Methods for Cranial Modeling

Automatic cranial model deformation has a significant impact on the ergonomic design of headgears. It benefits product design by providing accurate human cranial measurements while automatically deforming to target shapes. With the development of automatic deformation methods, cranial modeling can now be handled efficiently rather than manually customized. Furthermore, previous studies have shown that integrating anatomical landmarks in deformation methods can improve modeling accuracy. Hence, this study provides anatomical definitions of cranial landmarks, including 51 skull landmarks and 14 mandible landmarks.This study compares three different landmark-guided deformation methods using the above anatomic landmarks, including Landmark-Guided Coherent Point Drift (LGCPD), Neural Deformation Pyramid (NDP), and the registration part in SCULPTOR (S-ARAP). These three methods treat the automatic deformation problem as a task of probability density estimation, hierarchical deformation decomposition, and local rigidity preservation, respectively. However, LGCPD is computationally intensive, which means once the cranial model has many vertices, the computation consumes a large memory and runs slowly. Additionally, LGCPD is sensitive to obtain a suboptimal solution and results in a deformed model with a high shape variation. NDP simplifies the deformation problem by decomposing it into several sub-deformations. With Multi-Layer Perception (MLP), NDP can perform the deformation approximately 10 times faster than LGCPD. However, without the constraint of local rigidity, partial-to-partial deformation accumulates minor deformation errors from each sub-step, leading to unsatisfactory deformation results. S-ARAP uniformly samples control nodes and computes their influence weights on the source model's vertices using Radial Basis Function (RBF). The larger the distance between the node and the vertices, the higher the weight with a stronger influence. The as-rigid-as-possible (ARAP) term is then introduced to preserve the local rigidity of the deformed model with the calculated influence weights for the local regions. Therefore, S-ARAP can automatically deform the cranial model, particularly the skull part with complex geometries, to achieve a well-structured result. Moreover, the control node sampling speeds up the execution of deformation while using less memory than LGCPD. Instead of the decomposition in NDP, S-ARAP increases the number of control nodes in several stages to perform hierarchical deformation.Finally, with quantitative and qualitative experimental results, the study discusses and compares the suitability of these three deformation methods for automatic cranial modeling. The study computes Chamfer-Distance (CD) and Point-to-Plane Distance (PTPD) on the deformed results for quantitative comparisons. CD determines the distance between deformed vertices and the nearest vertices on the target model and vice versa. PTPD calculates the distance between the deformed vertices and the nearest plane on the target model to calculate the shape error. The maximum value in PTPD can help identify outliers in deformed results. Lower CD and PTPD values suggest a better match with the target. According to the experimental results, S-ARAP outperforms LGCPD and NDP in terms of CD and PTPD. Furthermore, the deformed data are visualized with a heatmap revealing the large deformation error, and S-ARAP shows the lowest fitting error on the deformed results. Thus, S-ARAP is a suitable method for automatic deformation on cranial modeling.

Zhuoman Liu, Yan Luximon, Wei Lin Ng, Eric Chung, Jie Zhang

Conference Proceedings

A Novel Temple Clamping Force Measurement Method for Eyeglasses Design

The temple clamping force is an important factor affecting the fit and comfort of most eyeglasses. The temple height is usually very small (1.0~6.0 mm) and the clamping force is very low (0.0~1.0 N). However, the diameters of the effective area of available force sensors are usually larger than the temple height, and their lowest measurable force is sometimes larger than the clamping forces. This causes difficulty in measuring the clamping force using force sensors. Hence, we proposed a novel temple clamping force measurement method for eyeglasses, which only uses a digital tension meter. In this method, the displacement of the ear attachment points (EAPs) at the temple was computed based on the static and wearing expanded lateral distance of EAPs; and then the tensile force was measured based on the temple displacement by using a digital tension meter. The method has been applied to investigate the relationship between the measured clamping forces and the perceived fit scores of the temples. The experimental results are consistent with the previous report, which demonstrates the reliability of our proposed method.

Jie Zhang, Junjian Chen, Luwei Chen, Yan Luximon

Conference Proceedings

Integrating Views of Digital Twins in the Strategic Planning of Cyber-Physical Products

The digital twin is the virtual representation of the real product and provides the basis for cyber-physical products. Information about states as well as commands are stored in the digital twin. A multitude and variety of stakeholders can retrieve the states and execute the commands. Howev-er, the digital twin is not made available to these stakeholders in its entirety, but rather application- and user-specific rights are distributed to them. These application- and user-specific rights are un-derstood to be the views of digital twins. Taking these views into account in the early stages of product development has the potential to reduce costs, open up new markets and adapt end products to individual customer requirements with less effort. The concept developed in this paper integrates the views of digital twins into the early stages of development of cyber-physical products. A model for strategic product planning is implemented that fully takes into account the criteria of Industry 4.0 and the views of digital twins. In this phase of the product life cycle, the views of digital twins are defined and integrated. A newly developed persona model can be used to analyze and formalize both users, in this case stakeholders, and ap-plications, in this case smart services. The stakeholder model considers both the assignment of a group and a role, as well as the identification of tasks, problems and benefits, and PESTEL influenc-ing factors. The smart service model addresses on the one hand the tasks, problems and benefits of the stakeholders; on the other hand, states and commands can be recorded as well as hardware, software and infrastructure can be analyzed. A comparison of these two models with each other promises an optimal fit. It is thus possible to fulfill customer-specific wishes. The developed concept is validated with the help of a practical use case. In particular, the integra-tion of the views of digital twins is investigated. As a result of the investigation, the applicability and viability of the concept are demonstrated on the basis of a vacuum cleaning robot. In the outlook, future research potentials are identified and possible new solution approaches are presented.

Lars Arnemann, Benjamin Schleich

Conference Proceedings

Facilitating Knowledge Creation in Innovation Activities with Boundary Media

Innovation is an essential aspect of contemporary corporate administration. While the co-creation of innovation activities by stakeholders in diverse positions enables the exploration of new value, there are also difficulties, such as conflicts arising from differences in positions and expertise within the organization. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an approach to manage co-creation and create value as an organization. Several cases have reported the function of specific media facilitating collaboration across boundaries among diverse actors in corporate innovation activities, referring to the concept of Boundary Objects introduced in sociology. The mechanism of which media and how they function as boundary objects remain unclear. In this study, we defined Boundary Media as “media intentionally introduced to a group” and conducted an idea creation workshop simulating the early stages of innovation activities. This study aimed to examine how boundary media function as boundary objects in facilitating group knowledge creation. Our findings indicated that two types of boundary media were effective: sculptures that artfully depict keywords for idea creation and idea sketches that describe ideas. In particular, they were especially effective in idea creation for tangible products by evoking creativity through inspiration and facilitating knowledge sharing, thereby facilitating group knowledge creation.

Taishi Kamiya

Conference Proceedings

Hybrid Intelligence - how to gain competitive advantages and process innovations in challenging times

Current influences such as the Corona pandemic, war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis, delivery and supply bottlenecks, and climate change are calling on the state, society, and business to deliver cooperative and sustainable concepts in response. In addition to developments in the areas of demography and decarbonization, in particular potentials of internal as well as cross-company digitalization of processes and structures lead to a profound transformation of our working world. Promising innovations are also promised by hybrid AI approaches, new network architectures and AI simulations using quantum computers. The presentation will show how hybrid AI methods can be used to combine the knowledge and experience of experts (e.g., specialists) with data-based approaches that use machine learning methods to analyze statistical correlations and derive recommendations for new business models and forms of human-machine interaction for process optimization.

Christian Vocke, Wilhelm Bauer, Carmen Constantinescu, Daniela Popescu

Conference Proceedings

X Thinking in the Experience Economy Era: 23 Personas that Identify Generation Z Interaction Qualities

In today's business landscape, enterprises are no longer relying solely on their understanding of products but are instead prioritizing user experiences. To comprehend and model the challenges presented by this shift, we conducted a sequence of literature reviews and six qualitative user studies. Through this research, we identified 23 archetypical personas and how they manifest in the experience economy era. Building upon these insights, we identified six crucial interaction qualities and intend to create design guidelines and demonstrators that facilitate Generation Z interactions in everyday life.

Xin Xin, Shuping Sun, Bowen Li, Zhouyang Li, Mingyang Zhang, Feng Huang, Michael T Lai, Rongrong Zhang, Wei Liu

Conference Proceedings

The role of the digital coach in the context of digital transformation

The article deals with the results of the three-year EU project "Digital Coach". The project uses the ADAPTION maturity model and links it with the learning factory approach to develop a practice-oriented concept for promoting digital transformation in organisations and to apply it in Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece and Germany. Against this background, the tasks of the digital coach as a process promoter of the digital transformation in organisations are elaborated and a qualification programme is developed and tested.The tasks that the digital coach takes on in an organisation are interpreted as a special form of service meeting certain quality standards. The corresponding quality of the service can be determined in the project based on specific quality criteria and procedures for service quality.The establishment of this service in the form of a digital coach task field is interpreted as a special innovation in the project. In doing so, the article explores the question of the extent to which the implementation of the digital coach task field succeeds. To investigate this scientifically, a questionnaire was developed in several workshops with the project partners and experts from the field. The aim is to explore the possibilities and limits of establishing the task field of the digital coach in organisations and companies.The following question was investigated: What resistances and potentials can arise from the perspective of the organisational members when establishing the field of activity of the digital coach in the organisation? The respondents could choose between 16 items and give an assessment of the importance and the changeability of the potentials and resistances against the background of the implementation in the organisation. There was also the possibility to name and rank further potentials and resistances. Finally, suggestions were worked out on how to deal with the respective opportunities and barriers in a suitable way. A total of 40 questionnaires from four EU countries were available for evaluation. The evaluation of the survey was carried out with the help of the SPSS programme. Means, standard deviations, T-tests, effect sizes and factor analyses were carried out.As an example, the results of some items on resistance are discussed: Item 2 "It is unclear which organisational members the DC should ask in the organisation in order to gain knowledge about the processes relevant to digital transformation" is rated as changeable in a pronounced way, but at the same time not considered as important. Item 11 "It is often not easy to make the success of the DC's work visible" is also seen as easy to change, but as not very problematic. In contrast, item 12 "Since some organisational members reject or even resist change, there is a risk that the changes proposed by the DC will be viewed critically with the consequence that they will ultimately not be adopted" is seen as one of the greatest resistances. At the same time, this item is seen as the least changeable. Based on the results, concrete strategies for action can be derived and developed so that the establishment of the field of activity of the digital coach as an innovative service in organisations is successful.

Martin Kröll, Kristina Burova-Keßler

Conference Proceedings

An enhanced version of the Business Model Canvas for risk management and business continuity

In a world of uncertainty business planning can be considered as the biggest changes faced by companies and organizations. The recent Covid-19 health crisis and the Russian-Ukraine political conflict are just indicative on the massive impact such situations can have in the planning and operations of any organization. From the Chernobyl disaster in the 80s, the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s, the 9/11 terrorist attack in the 2000’s, the Global financial crisis in the 2010’s and so on, such crises seem to continuously appear, without business planning efforts to consider such unpredictable events, which tend to appear frequently the last decade. Therefore, proactive risk, forecast, analysis and management need to be part of planning activities at least in three dimensions. The first one is the organizations dimension which defines the organizational readiness in terms of internal infrastructure to handle a crisis, the second is the socio-economic impact a specific crisis can have on the market and the society an organization operates, and the third dimension is on post crisis activities an organization must perform to achieve business continuity, and in many cases disaster recovery. This paper builds on the existing Business Model Canvas (BMC), a widely known business planning methodology, accepted and used by many organizations. The addition made on the BMC demonstrates in a practical way the position of the three risk dimensions proposed in this research and their interaction and impact with the existing business planning segments of the BMC which remain unchanged. The three risk dimensions form the BMC shield, a term used to conceptualize the protection of the business, around the planning process, from unexpended risks and disasters. The new BMC, with the risk management shield is powered by the Company Democracy Model (CDM), a democratic organizational culture driven in this case towards risk management thinking and action. CDM is used to democratically, collectively and continuously collect, access and integrated risk management data, ideas, and actions in the risk management shield to protect the business planning process. To further demonstrate the BMC shield concept and operations the paper analyses the application of proposed approach within the PESLTE and CAGE international business frameworks. Since most of the crisis have international impact the PESLTE and the CAGE elements must be also analysed from the potential risk dimension during the planning process. The proposed busies planning approach can be used by any organization regardless the size, the sector or region it operates. It is a practical tool that ignites a democratic thinking on dealing with possible risks that can come up but also on how these risks can be mitigated withing the planned operations. The research conducted in based on an extensive literature review, primary research with surveys and interviews but also with the analysis of several case studies that indicate the needs and the trends for the development of such an approach. The paper indicates the pre and post condition on using the proposed methodology, research limitations, areas of further research to be conducted for the application of the proposed approach in vertical organizational sectors and geographic regions.

Evangelos Markopoulos, Victoria Neumer, Hannu Vanharanta

Conference Proceedings

Evaluation of Creative Designer Roles In Terms of Entrepreneurial Competences

In terms of defining and implementing new and innovative ideas, creativity and entrepreneurship are inextricably linked. In this context, creativity and entrepreneurship inevitably form sub-functions of each other in terms of performance. Because both concepts are carried out in uncertain and dynamic situations, their qualities mutually complement each other. However, it is not always possible for every creative person to be an entrepreneur or vice versa.Design is a creative process in which ideas originate from a combination of professional experience, intuition, and the knowledge required. The design process takes place in an uncertain environment, and design concepts do not emerge in a vacuum; they are frequently the product of the creative synthesis of earlier experiences with knowledge, insight, and entrepreneurship that have contributed to the development and success of many businesses. Design encompasses not only creative thinking but also innovative, productive, and compositional activities as part of entrepreneurship with a mix of rational, ideal, and pragmatic inquiry. Therefore, designers not only must be creative in the design phase but also need to act as entrepreneurs/intrapreneurs as they seek to identify and address customer needs and effectively communicate and prototype their ideas to potential customers. The most creative part of the design process is identifying problems and developing solutions for analysis, evaluation, and selection to help businesses improve their operations and efficiency. To achieve these goals, designers may need to assume certain roles.The concept of entrepreneurship essentially contains positive and privileged meanings. For this reason, many people believe that they have entrepreneurial characteristics and want to be mentioned as entrepreneurs. Some professions, such as industrial design, naturally claim to be entrepreneurial because of their activities. Due to the positive meaning of entrepreneurship, designers are concerned about developing and transforming their practices within the principles of entrepreneurship. Moreover, current design discourses imply that design thinking will help entrepreneurs in the generation and selection of innovative ideas. Simply put, design entrepreneurship is the collection of correct skills and abilities required to develop the right ideas and market them as successful design products. However, to be an entrepreneur, some entrepreneurial personality traits must be present in addition to the establishment of some pre-existing conditions.Within the scope of this study, it is aimed to compare the creative and innovative roles identified in the literature and attributed to designers with the competencies needed for entrepreneurship and identify possible intersections. The first stage of the study attempted to identify the roles attributed to designers and entrepreneurship competencies. The following stage of the review aims to determine the major or key roles of the designers. The next stage of the research focuses on 41 entrepreneurship competence frameworks under four main headings. The study's last section contrasted 83 creative and innovative role and definition contents assigned to designers with 41 entrepreneurial competence definitions using NLP-based text similarity measurement, and the text mining results were evaluated through correspondence analysis.

Serkan Güneş

Conference Proceedings

How to set up design skills in IT companies

In recent years, businesses utilizing data and artificial intelligence are becoming more prevalent in society, and the design skills required in IT companies are changing. The purpose of this study is to propose a method for setting up design skills that takes into account changes in the design skills required by IT companies. After organizing the skills to be referred to when setting up design skills, this research conducted a workshop to validate how to set up design skills and discussed the evaluations from the workshop participants.

Toshiya Sasaki

Conference Proceedings

Comparisons of kinesiology tapes: Raw materials, fabric structure, physical strength and comfort properties

Kinesiology tape is a thin, flexible relatively new intervention for treating a variety of injuries such as relieving pain, reducing swelling and inflammation, and providing support to joints and muscles. However, there is little study to support the material composition and structural properties as well as the physical strength and comfort properties of different kinds of kinesiology tapes. Therefore, in this study, numerous testing was conducted to measure the structural, physical strength, and comfort properties. The experimental results show that kinesiology tapes are non-linear elastic fabric where the backsides of the fabrics are coated with an acrylic adhesive. It was also found that warp yarns of the fabrics are mostly based on core-spun elastic yarns and weft yarns are rigid cotton yarns. The physical strength of the kinesiology tapes were found from 104N to 272N which is unusual due to their structural material properties and fabric thickness. Air permeability, water vapor permeability, and thermal conductivity characteristics are mainly affected by the compact layer of acrylic adhesive on the surface of the fabric that might be significantly increased under tensile extension resulting in air permeability, water vapor, and thermal conductivity properties will be increasing that can positively affect wearer comfort.

Kamrul Hasan, Ameersing Luximon, Yan Luximon

Conference Proceedings

Tokyo Sensory Safari: Experience Innovation & Human Factors Immersion

The intention: Bring people to Japan to learn about human senses and cognition. This was just before the world locked down for the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan: Conduct a Sensory Safari that coincides with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. An opportunity for people to experience Tokyo at peak form and Japan at the top of its hosting spirit. An immersive way to expose participants to all human senses and methods for making offerings that are more understandable and fully human compatible. This curated experience is inspired by Proctor & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley and his visit to Japan decades earlier. After this visit he invests heavily in design and human factors seeking Japan-unique innovation in product packaging and placement. Uniqueness found only in Japan that persists to this day. Three years later, the country reopens for business and tourist travel and the renewed Tokyo 2023 Sensory Safari is again set in motion. Behind the safari is the Content Evolution SenseMapping practice team, with pioneering members of the now 30-year-young ThinkPad notebook computer, including the first IBM designer collaborating with the legendary industrial designer Richard Sapper, and the first named brand steward for IBM ThinkPad (today Lenovo). SenseMapping is a process and perspective to create coherence at the intersection of an organization (how it behaves and what it makes) with its value chain, customers, and stakeholders, and the intersection of human sensory perception and sense-making in the head, heart, and gut. The outcome: This paper documents the design of this immersive action learning experience, the framework for both observing and documenting product and service experiences while in Tokyo and sending participants home with a draft plan for action.

Kevin Clark, Kazuhiko Yamazaki, James Kwolyk, Sruti Vijaykumar

Conference Proceedings

The recognition of novelty in entrepreneurship education

In a global world with open knowledge in the extension process, bringing a new idea is a key to economic development, especially when it becomes a real opportunity market. Thus, bringing a new idea is a myth for academic researchers, and recognising and appreciating the actual value of an idea is more ambiguous and depends on the ability of the human brain to avoid prejudice against something they do not know and understand in a limited time. This paper seeks to identify criteria used in evaluating new idea value in business. The potential actors implicated in this process are investors and coach members of the committee project evaluation.

Aicha Dif, Zahra Hamdani

Conference Proceedings

Examining the effects of near and far cues on creativity

During the creative problem-solving, creators frequently encounter external stimuli. As a result of the context in which the problem exists, these stimuli can be near or far. Various theories in the past have supported the role of analogical cues to overcome impasses and generate new ideas. The use of analogous cues ensures successful transfer between the source and the target, depending on the degree of superficial similarity and complexity between them. However, some studies have shown that exposure to analogous cues can result in creative fixation rather than the development of new solutions. Furthermore, there has not been extensive research on the analysis of the combination of both the near and far cues on creativity as compared to the near and far analogies alone. This study investigates the effect of near and far cues in the creative process. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the impact of combining near and far analogies on creativity and its impact on the flexibility, fluency, and originality of the ideas produced.

Mritunjay Kumar, Satyaki Roy, Ahmed Sameer, Amit Kundal

Conference Proceedings

Eco Innovation and Firm Performance: A Meta Analysis

The objective of the meta-analysis is to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the relationship between eco-innovation and firm performance. Total 21 articles, published in different academic journals, were selected for the meta-analysis following a systematic literature search on the web of science and Scopus. The result of the meta-analysis suggests that there is a positive relationship between eco-innovation and firm ́s financial performance. The correlation between the variables is moderate (r > .20). However, findings suggest a heterogeneity among the reported effect size. It is found that study regions and sample company size have moderating effect on the heterogeneity score, suggesting these factors affects the result of an individual study. Moreover, the funnel plots suggest there might be the presence of publication bias.

Rocky Mahmud

Conference Proceedings

Fashion Designers' Creativity inside Organizations & Job Satisfaction – A case study

Creativity leads to innovation hence to new ways to be more competitive in the current economic situation. Fashion brands and organizations have been improving this magic formula since decades and studies on organizational creativity have bloomed. Originally published in 1939, the Hawthorne experience from Roethlisberger and William (2003), highlighted the importance of the workers’ job satisfaction (JS) to augment the levels of productivity inside organizations (Judge et al., 2001; Őnday, 2016). Regardless of how satisfied a given fashion designer is, one cannot deny that the level of JS will provoke a wave of behaviors and attitudes which will influence every element within the organizational system. In this study, validated correlations are presented to prove and showcase the importance of the fashion designers’ JS, and how it is connected to micro and macro contexts inside the workplace. The 114 (n=114) valid answers to an enquiry aiming to understand the role of different variables influencing the fashion designers’ self-perceived creativity (SPC) inside the organizations, unveiled several and statistical relevant correlations connecting different organizational contexts with workers’ JS. Organizational climate and culture (OCC) and SPC showcased strong correlations with JS (Barata & Miguel, 2022) as well as individual motivation (IM), as suggested by Amabile (1997) when referring that creativity has much to do with loving the work one does and Judge et al., (2001) regarding the role of passion to predict JS. The group climate (GC) presented a moderate influence in the JS rates (Rs=0,547) once group climate can influence trust, autonomy, safety, behaviors, workflow, among other topics within the working teams. As stated in the theory, models and instruments to measure organizational creative climate and innovation (e.g., Amabile & Pratt, 2016; Blomberg & Kallio, 2017; Ekvall, 1996), well defined goals and criteria for excellence (GCE) are correlated to JS in a positive moderate sense (Rs=0,472). The existence of resources (RE) within the workplace are directly linked to increased JS; they are correlated in a moderate and positive way (Rs=0,514) as they are tied to the perception and feeling of how far one’s creative developments may reach (T. M. Amabile & Pratt, 2016; Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010; Epstein et al., 2013; Woodman et al., 1993).Considering the positive correlations (0 to 1), the study provides clear evidence of unidirectional symbiotic ratio between JS, IM, SPC, OCC, GC, GCE and RE.

João Barata, Rui Miguel

Conference Proceedings

Inspiration mining: Exploring startup research(ers) strategies Part III

We know the difﬁculties inherent to the discovery of a timely research topic, capable of becoming a signiﬁcant contribution to knowledge and science in Design. The article describes and presents the results of an atypical process of Design research, tested in a Masters in Design. The objectives of the research process under analysis focus on the development of research skills and critical reﬂection in a collaborative environment of exploration of the (apparently) unknown (i.e. outside the areas of individual comfort), in search of new meanings. The starting point is the exploration of concepts, ideas and themes (inspiration mining) starting with a proposal for curation of reference titles, with the purpose of discovering, through the establishment of relations more or less (im)probable, relationships and conceptual leaps and ﬂashes of inspiration through the ideas with the greatest potential (ﬁrst in a perspective of divergence and expansion, then in a perspective of convergence and concentration), possible points of interception, new (disruptive) concepts, ideas and unexpected themes inspirers for the individual research project, going through the itinerary – discovery > interpretation > ideation > experimentation > transformation. Starting with a curation of 12 printed reference titles (some of the titles may be lateral to the scientiﬁc area of study) plus 2 key titles, the students select and use (for 60 minutes) 6 reference titles of their choice, identifying and registering, under the form of a mental map and on paper (A3), 18 concepts, ideas and themes (3 per title). They then elaborate an analytical index of the 18 concepts, ideas and themes and depart to relate and discuss 9 of the 18 concepts, ideas and themes. The process culminates in the construction of a distinctive narrative originating in the 9 concepts, ideas and themes (in the form of text and ideographic). The result of the process is translated into a document in the form of a scientiﬁc article that can use the new media as a communication support and can be supported by artifacts (images) that contextualize the discourse. The research environment is an incubator of possible futures for design research, testing innovation through content curation, collaboration and connectivity, supported by the inspirational collaborative and interactive intelligence platform - inspædia (www.inspaedia.com). Rapid prototyping of possible ideas for research topics among participants (inspired cultural provocateurs) coach, prepares and transforms educated thinkers into highly educated thinkers to be innovation. This article (Part 3) presents a synthesis of the selected works developed by the students in the current academic year (2022-2023).

Paulo Maldonado, Pedro Seiça, Ana Margarida Andr, Vera Matos

Conference Proceedings