IoT- technology, Internet of Things, is a fast-growing business, it means that more and more products, clothes, even people are provided with sensors that can communicate and perceive the surroundings to create a smarter community. For companies to keep up to date, it is essential to continuously provide products with better components and reduced size. To stand out further, companies should provide revolutionary products, with totally new feature. One of these ideas, of a new kind of product with special features, have been investigated and developed in this thesis.

The thesis has been conducted with the company CombiQ, located in Jönköping, Sweden. The product that was going to be developed was an industrial sensor, that uses the technology of IIoT, Industrial Internet of Things, that the company develops. At the time when this project took place, CombiQ did not sell any own product, only the technology that was placed inside the products.

To develop the industrial sensor for CombiQ, not only the functions of the product had to be investigated, further the brand had to be analyzed to create a design expression reflecting the company.

Through implement several tools and methods, from among other things the product development process and design thinking, a concept of an industrial sensor is presented that fulfill the specific requirements and functions. Where the main-feature is that the sensor should be a modular solution to be adjusted for the specific need of the clients. Furthermore, during the project a visual brand language with design guidelines have been developed to reflect the design aspects of the company CombiQ. Design guidelines can be used for further product for the company in the same manners, which also has been displayed by developing design concept of the rest of the industrial sensor that counts to the same product family as the modular sensor. 

The way a product or material is experienced by its user could be different depending on the scenario. It is also well known that different materials and surfaces are used for different purposes. When optimizing materials and surface roughness for a certain something with the intention to improve a product, it is important to obtain not only the physical requirements, but also the user experience and expectations. Laws and requirements of the materials and the surface function, but also the conservative way of thinking about materials and colours characterize the design of medical equipment. The purpose of this paper is to link the technical- and customer requirements of current materials and surface textures in medical environments. By focusing on parts of the theory of Kansei Engineering, improvements of the companys' products are possible. The idea is to find correlations between desired experience or «feeling» for a product, -customer requirements, functional requirements, and product geometrical properties -design parameters, to be implemented on new improved products. To be able to find new materials with the same (or better) technical requirements but a higher level of user stimulation, the current material (stainless steel) and its surface (brushed textures) was used as a reference. The usage of focus groups of experts at the manufacturer lead to a selection of twelve possible new materials for investigation in the project. In collaboration with the topical company for this project, three new materials that fulfil the requirements -easy to clean and anti-bacterial came to be in focus for further investigation in regard to a new design of a washer-disinfector for medical equipment using the Kansei based Clean ability approach CAA. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Design-driven innovation focuses on the innovation of product meanings. This innovation is enabled by integrating knowledge on needs, product language and technological development. So far, it has mostly been studied in contexts where the buyer is the assumed end user. There has been little research about design-driven innovation in other contexts, such as business-to-business and public contexts. Here, companies need to create value for multiple stakeholders. In this study, these are defined as users, buyers and influencers. The aim of this study is to explore how companies consider the different stakeholders in the innovation of product meanings. Two companies participated in a case study. The results demonstrate that both companies mainly focus on addressing needs. However, while one case company prioritizes the perspective from the user, the other focuses more on the buyer. The results illustrate the increased complexity that companies need to manage in design-driven innovation in these contexts.

Teachers from two different disciplines, Materials and manufacturing and Industrial design, are brought together to give a course on masters level. Also the students come from different disciplines. They study two different master programs in Product development, Product development and materials engineering and Industrial design. The course is called Materials and design, and it covers both disciplines. Apart from lectures, computer labs and home assignments, a workshop was arranged where the students during one day solved a task related to product development. The students were divided into groups in such a way that a mixture of students from the two programs was obtained. The workshop was held at a company in order to make the work more realistic. Before they started to solve the task, they were given an introduction to the products made by the company and their applications. The main task was then to investigate the products and come up with ideas about what applications there might be in the future. The result was at the end of the day presented to the company. In this paper, the workshop is described, and comments and reflections from the students and the company are summarized. Finally the teachers involved give their opinion about the result and the pedagogic benefits from such a workshop, and also what to think about for the next time. It appeared that the workshop was an eye-opener to the company at the same time as the students had a fair chance to work in a realistic situation and practice how to use their knowledge. Also for the teachers it was a good experience, not only from a pedagogic viewpoint but also on how to arrange this kind of workshops in the future.

The School of Engineering in Jönköping offers four master programs with in total about 100 students, relatively evenly distributed among those four programs. The school has made a thorough revision of all its programs, largely to improve the influence by the principles of CDIO with a start of the new curricula at fall semester 2013. For the master programs this meant that a new joint introductory course for all master students should be set in operation. The aim with this paper is to present the basic rationale behind the course, how it was set in operation and the students’ and teachers’ experiences of the first trial as well as planned modifications for next year’s course. The profile of the research at the school is to advance the knowledge concerning the product realization process in small- and medium sized manufacturing companies and the different master programs support this profile. It was thus decided that the introductory course should demonstrate the same profile by a project performed by the students. Moreover, the course should support the development of a community of master students that know each other regardless of the master program they are following in order to enlarge the opportunities for networking and bringing different experiences together. The course should be appropriate as an introduction course for the four master programs, specializing in industrial design, product development, information engineering or production systems. The course should thus provide understanding also for other stages in the product realization process that are related to but not included in the own education, both regarding the process, the leadership and the research methods used. The design of the course was done by the program managers together with the examining teacher in group dynamics and leadership, thereby involving five teachers. The course examination volume is 9 credits (out of 120 for a whole master program), divided into three parts, the content of the product realization process (3 credits), the group dynamics and leadership development (3 credits) and the research and inquiry methodology knowledge (3 credits). The course was structured and taught by lectures, exercises, seminars and project work. Projects groups were formed including at least one student from each program. The examinations were done by a poster and model exhibition regarding the content of the product realization process, an individual reflective assignment regarding the leadership and group development process during the project and an individual written exam regarding the research and inquiry methodology part. The course is just finished, the exhibition has been held and the teacher group is correcting and grading the exam and the assignments. A plenary oral evaluation has been held where the students confirmed that some goals were reached and some were not. Moreover, the examination results of the course is not fully known yet but will be reported in the paper. The experiences among the teacher group are multifaceted but largely positive and next year’s course is looked forward to.

The aesthetic and pleasing properties of a product are important and add significantly to the meaning and relevance of a product. Customer sensation and perception are largely about psychological factors. There has been a strong industrial and academic need and interest for methods and tools to quantify and link product properties to the human response but a lack of studies of the impact o fsurfaces.In this study, affective surface engineering is used to illustrate and model the link between customer expectations and perception to controllable product surface properties. The results highlight the use of the soft metrology concept for linking physical and human factors contributing to the perception of products. Examples of surface applications of the Kansei methodology are presented from sauna bath, health care, architectural and hygiene tissue application areas to illustrate, discuss and confirm the strength of the methodology. In the conclusions of the study, future research in soft metrology is proposed to allow understanding and modelling of product perception and sensations in combination with a development of the Kansei surface engineering methodology and software tools.

New surface treatments, novel material developments, and improved quality control procedures and advanced metrology instrumentation create a possibility to further develop competitiveness by the selection of “optimal” surface features to a product.  The customers’ first apprehension of a product and the creation of desire is a very complex but tempting process to learn to master. The product appearance plays an important role in the judgement of a product, and the surface is, among form, colour, and material of greatest importance in creating a whole impression of a product. This work addresses this “partly possible” and “to a great extent impossible” task and is a novel approach to develop and join a traditional physical metrology frame-work with qualitative gradings of apprehended impressions and feelings of products with varying surface properties.

The aim of the study is to demonstrate the metrology framework linking measurable- and un-measurable properties of product surfaces to customer feeling/experience as exemplified by a set of industrial applications.  The results based on three case studies show that the usage of the "Kansei" method leads to an improved knowledge about surface features in relation to the customers’ demand as exemplified with “the sauna-“ and “the building exterior” surface cases.  Clear links between the expectations of the emotions linked to the products have been associated to the design variable -surface topography.

Future studies will be initiated based on the results in this work to further explore the possibilities with the tactile- and colour properties to further utilize the properties of surfaces as a strategic tool for product developers.

This report is about research and design of a new shopping experience in a retail section including a self-checkout device. The thesis is done for Master program in industrial design field at Jönköping University in collaboration with ITAB scan Flow Company. Since the project is a process-based design I have used ‘Research as design’ method for this project. The design research includes background stage, the brief, concept design, design development, detail design and production which in this project is a non-functional model scale to 1:1. The project aims to answer the following questions,

1. How can we improve the current SCOs with respect to ergonomics, ease of use and user-friendly?

2. How can we design a new self-checkout which people take less and easier steps to finish the check-out process?

3. What factors could change the look and design of the current vendors, so it fits better in the shop and appealing to customers?

To achieve the best, result several methods used for this project such as; design brief, literature review, future forecasting, product break down, image boards, interviews, ethnography and observation, personas and scenarios, ergonomic study, functional analysis, competitor analysis, cause and effect analysis, mock-up tests, sketching, evaluation, cad modelling, prototyping etc.

The result is a compact package in a plastic material which can be wall mount or placed on the unit. The SCO is slightly curved and less bulky to look more user-friendly and appealing to users. Checkout flow is much easier compared to the existing ones as every step happens in front flow in neutral body position. All users especially Handicap users can benefit from using the mobile application for shopping which is quite less time consuming during the check-out process.