Jan Detand

Engineering meets creativity: a study on a creative tool to design new connections

Designers and engineers in practice can rely on a comprehensive assortment of physical connections such as bolts, adhesives, and snap joints to design a product. However, future materials, processes, and technologies lead to other requirements. Designers must be creative to find new solutions that meet the new requirements. The Design to Connect method presented in this paper was developed to support designers in the ideation of new connections in products. It provides inspiration to expand their design space and support them to generate more ideas. The tool contains 46 cards. Each card contains a heuristic and is illustrated with an inspirational example. Six design drivers can be used to select a subset of the most relevant inspiration cards for a specific context. The tool and the framework are both evaluated in an experimental setup with a relevant sample of novice designers with different educational backgrounds. The results demonstrate that the participants generate significantly higher number of ideas and explore a larger solution space when they apply the tool cards. Selecting a set of relevant inspiration cards in advance does not have a significant effect on the amount of ideas or the size of the solutions space. Furthermore, most participants prefer a less structured approach in their ideation and those with a more abstract level of education explored more ideas and a larger solution space compared to participants with a more practical education.

Potential benefits of crawl position for prone radiation therapy in breast cancer

Abstract Purpose To investigate crawl position with the arm at the treated side alongside the body and at the opposite side above the head for prone treatment in patients requiring breast and regional lymph node irradiation. Methods Patient support devices for crawl position were built for CT simulation and treatment. An asymmetric fork design resulted from an iterative process of prototype construction and testing. The forks large horn supports the hemi‐thorax, shoulder, and elevated arm at the nontreated side and the head. The short, narrow horn supports the arm at the treated side. Between both horns, the treated breast and its regional lymph nodes are exposed. Endpoints were pain, comfort, set‐up precision, beam access to the breast and lymph nodes, and plan dose metrics. Pain and comfort were tested by volunteers (n = 9); set‐up precision, beam access, and plan dose metrics were tested by means of a patient study (n = 10). The AIO™ (Orfit, Wijnegem, Belgium) prone breastboard (AIO™) was used as a reference regarding comfort and set‐up precision. Results Pain at the sternum, the ipsilateral shoulder, upper arm, and neck was lower in crawl position than with bilateral arm elevation on AIO™. Comfort and set‐up precision were better on the crawl prototype than on AIO™. In crawl position, beam directions in the coronal and near‐sagittal planes have access to the breast or regional lymph nodes without traversing device components. Plan comparison between supine and crawl positions showed better dose homogeneity for the breast and lymph node targets and dose reductions to all organs at risk for crawl position. Conclusions Radiation therapy for breast and regional lymph nodes in crawl position is feasible. Good comfort and set‐up precision were demonstrated. Planning results support the hypothesis that breast and regional lymph nodes can be treated in crawl position with less dose to organs at risk and equal or better dose distribution in the target volumes than in supine position. The crawl technique is a candidate methodology for further investigation for patients requiring breast and regional lymph node irradiation.

Reframing connections: an approach to stimulate creativity

Today, more and more products are made with different materials and composites to fulfil the more and more requiring product needs. New materials and production processes creates new possibilities for designers. Designing connections is still an important aspect of developing products. The connections influence the assembly, the product aesthetics, the strength of the product,... How to design and construct a product depends on the creativity and the experience of the designer. The creativity is the main force behind design and innovation. This paper discusses an approach which considers connections on different levels. By looking at connections in different ways, designers could create new insights and stimulate their creativity.

The relation between patient discomfort and uncompensated forces of a patient support device for breast and regional lymph node radiotherapy

Although many authors stated that a user-centred design approach in medical device development has added values, the most common research approach within healthcare is evidence-based medicine, which tend to focus on functional data rather than patient wellbeing and comfort. End user comfort is well addressed in literature for commercial products such as seats and hand tools but no data was found for medical devices. A commercial patient support device for breast radiotherapy was analysed and a relation was found between discomfort and uncompensated internal body forces. Derived from CT-images, simplified patient free-body diagrams were analysed and pain and comfort evaluated. Subsequently, a new patient position was established and prototypes were developed. Patient comfort- and prototype optimization was done through iterative prototyping. With this approach, we were able to compensate all internal body forces and establish a force neutral patient free-body diagram. This resulted in comfortable patient positioning and favourable medical results.