Preface

Chapter 8 **Toy Design Methods: A Sustainability Perspective 167** Denis A. Coelho and Sónia A. Fernandes

Chun-Fong You, Chin-Ren Jeng and Kun-Yu Liu

Inalda A. L. L. M. Rodrigues and Denis A. Coelho

Chapter 11 **Visual and Material Culture in the Context of Industrial Design: The Contemporary Nigerian Experience 223**

Chapter 9 **Design for Automotive Panels Supported by an**

Chapter 10 **Early Stages of Industrial Design Careers 211**

**Expert System 187**

**Section 4 Case Studies 185**

**VI** Contents

I.B. Kashim

A fast paced changing world requires dynamic methods and robust theories to enable designers to deal with the changing product development landscape successfully and hence make a difference in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. Designers continue stretching the boun‐ daries of their discipline, and trail new paths in interdisciplinary domains, constantly moving the frontiers of their practice farther ahead. This book, following Industrial Design – New Frontiers, also published by InTech, develops the concepts present in the previous book further, as well as reaching new areas of theory and practice in industrial design and in industrial design engineering.

The eleven chapters in this book report on the novel frontiers of the current era of industrial de‐ sign, in some cases going over those frontiers to look at how neighbouring disciplines tackle shared problems. Design process innovation, industrial design perspectives and sustainability are the overarching themes of each of the first three parts of the book, while the last part contains a set of three case studies.

The first part of the book, focusing on innovations in the design process, looks at bionic design as a two-way approach, at design thinking in conceptual approaches, at product sound design and at the theory of inventive problem solving. The design of product instructions and simplicity in design are the two industrial design perspectives covered in the second part. The topic of sustain‐ ability is the major theme of the third part of the book, focusing on the sustainability of product innovation and providing a sustainability perspective on toy design methods. A set of case stud‐ ies makes up the fourth and last part of this book. These include the domain of automotive de‐ sign, professional initiation and visual and material culture.

The encompassing contents and the diversity of the chapters is bound to entice readers and help them reach new insights on how to advance both their practice and their research on the domain of product design for industrial manufacture and industrial design in general. The book is struc‐ tured and written so that a layperson, or a student, may quickly grasp the contours of the domain and decide whether to go deeper in one particular subject or application domain. Whatever the initial stance of the reader, we hope that this book may be of value in advancing the understand‐ ing of some of the most prominent of the current challenges in this fascinating field.

#### **Professor Denis A. Coelho**

Human Technology Group (Director) Masters Program in Industrial Design Engineering (Coordinator) Product Development and Prototyping Laboratory (Head) Dept. Electromechanical Engineering, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

**Section 1**

**Design Process Innovation**

**Design Process Innovation**

**Chapter 1**

**A Bi-Directional Method for**

**Bionic Design with Examples**

Carlos A. M. Versos and Denis A. Coelho

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53417

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Design methodologies are essential tools in the design process which provide pathways, goals and technical guidelines for the development of products. These are also critical to minimize the risks and the time of the development process of a product (Kindlein et al., 2003). It should, how‐ ever, be noted that the use of a method of design for the development of the product does not in itself create or guarantee the success of a product, as this will be subject to a myriad of factors in‐ cluding the level of technical expertise and creativity of who makes use of the method. Previ‐ ous work by Versos and Coelho (2011-a, 2011-b, 2010) and by Coelho and Versos (2011, 2010) analyzed and compared several methods for guiding bionic design that were available in litera‐ ture. These analyses, in addition to providing the basis of study for the development of the meth‐ odology that is aimed in this chapter, can support designers in the selection process of the bionic design method most appropriate to the problem at hand. Previous work emphasized the neces‐ sity of integrating validation activities in bionic design processes. The development and testing of improved methods that provide greater support to designers in the pursuit of activities lead‐ ing to bionic solutions is the overarching aim that this chapter seeks to contribute to satisfy. It is up to the designer to have control and decide upon the best option and way forward (Kin‐ dlein et al., 2003) in the design process. Thus, it is necessary to specify objectives, requirements and restrictions for the design process, as well as to present and define all possible paths in or‐ der to reduce the barriers for progression and to deal with the complexity inherent to the big number of variables involved in the course of the deployment of the method. Guiding the user towards requirements satisfaction and appropriate resolution of the problem at hand is the goal

of any design method, including design methods with a bionic character.

As in Nature—an environment in constant adaptation and renewal, where species evolve systematically and only the strongest survive and become adapted to the environment—the planning and development of a product must also ensure an iterative nature of the process

> © 2013 Versos and Coelho; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Versos and Coelho; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

© 2013 Versos and Coelho; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
