Wouter Eggink

A practical approach to teaching abstract product design issues

‘Buy an identity’ and ‘surprise your senses’ are two of the ideas that were the outcome of a course ‘Design for a specific Theme’ (in the year 2006–07) held for 4th grade students of Industrial Design Engineering at Twente University. The theme in the title of this course was philosophical, based on the theory of globalisation of German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. In the following year 2007–08, the theme of the course was ‘leisure’, and it proved again that the structure of this course was particularly suitable for the conversion of such abstract themes in tangible product design. This paper describes the structure and the associated teaching methods of the course, gives examples of student results and discusses the points of interest and application possibilities of this type of course.

Future aesthetics of technology; context specific theories from design and philosophy of technology

Abstract Since Postmodernism, presenting universal guidelines for aesthetics is highly suspect. However, aesthetics can play a significant role in the acceptance of technology and its success in society, so this paper argues for the generating of specific aesthetic guidelines, based on a general perspective. The goal of the research was to find a method of generating guidelines for the design of a technology to improve the diffusion of that technology in society. Aesthetic theories were generated by comparison of factors with historic precedents (the automobile, the television and the personal computer) The theories were then tested for the design of a social companion robot and a vacuum cleaner robot. From these two design cases it became apparent that the acceptance of both devices can be improved by, respectively, improving their conformity to contemporary design (the social companion robot), or improving their conformity to contemporary philosophy of technology (the vacuum robot).

Product integrated PV: the future is design and styling

In this paper we explore how PV powered products have been designed in the past. For this purpose we have drawn a historical time line of the design features of PV powered products in the context of main stream design and styling. Our time frame is 1970 till 2016, focusing in first instance on consumer products and PV powered lamps. We will discuss how we learn from these experiences for the design and styling of future PV powered products. Because design and styling is considered one of the key features to a well-designed product, this study is relevant for the acceptability of PV products in nowadays consumer markets. Despite many studies on the technical functioning and energy performance of PV powered products, little attention has been paid to a constructive analysis of design and styling. Therefore with this study we make a start with identifying which design and styling factors can contribute to a higher appreciation for PV powered products.