The importance of inter- and transdisciplinary research for addressing today’s complex challenges has been increasingly recognised. This requires new forms of communication and interaction between researchers from different disciplines and nonacademic stakeholders. Demonstrators constitute a crucial communication tool in technology research and development and have the potential to leverage communication between different bodies of knowledge. However, there is little knowledge on how to design demonstrators. This research aims to understand how demonstrators from the fields Internet of Things and Robotics are designed to communicate technology. The goal is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of demonstrator practice with readily implemented design knowledge and to advance theoretical knowledge in the field of communicating artefacts. We thematically analysed 28 demonstrator design cases, which led to a typology that assists in categorising and understanding 13 key design principles. The typology is built from three perspectives: First, in terms of the overall goal communication, second, in terms of visitor engagement goals (attraction, initial engagement, deep engagement) and third, in terms of resource-related goals (low effort in development and operation). With this typology, we have taken a significant step towards understanding demonstrator design principles for effective technology communication between different stakeholders.

According to sustainability transitions theory, socio-technical change requires a convergence of politics, social change, technology, and niche innovations. Recently, a circular economy has been proposed as the engine of such change in the EU New Green Deal and Germany. Mainstream circular economy emphasizes the closing of material loops as the way to ensure green growth, and there is a key role for design to achieve such change. According to reports, however, the global appetite for a circular economy remains limited and critics have pointed to several contradictions between the rhetoric and reality of the circular economy and sustainable development. In addition, current formulations of circular economy misrepresent the plurality of discourses for a sustainable circular economy and the role of expert and diffuse circular design. In this study, we employ the recently articulated ten principles for a sustainable circular economy and society to analyze two contrasting circular roadmap projects in Germany, which reflect two contrasting technical and reformist circular discourses, and understandings of the role of design. We find that there are narrow and broad interpretations of design inherent in these circular policies as well as the exemplification of the difference between a technical circular economy and reformist circular society discourses. The practical applied value of this analysis is that the framework can be employed to analyze other policies.

No abstract

"Up to 70% of all new products are based on new materials and there is considerable scientific and economic potential in combining different material and technology domains in particular. Former research projects have shown that material scientists face several challenges in the later stages of the innovation process, especially in market placement meeting the needs of business customers and other stakeholders. Problems are e.g. too complicated communication of their work, missing understandable business cases, and uninspiring demonstrators. These developing issues could already be prevented in an early TRL level by using and combining product design and business modeling methods. The paper presents the design of the innovation process of competence acquisition of business model development and design development methods for material scientists. The innovation and training process is designed to overcome the ""Valley of Death"", i.e., the unsuccessful transfer of research results to the to market maturity. The goal of the process for the material scientists is to a) reflect and structure own competencies b) to make unique selling propositions comprehensible and c) to generate and strengthen impact. In addition, the observed limitations are described, which were observed during the implementation of the process in two test groups composed by scientists from three different institutes and research areas in materials science to further refine the field. The findings are based on a) literature reviews and b) observations during the design, implementation and evaluation of the process. Part of the core findings is the increased acceptance of the methods applied in the innovation process, if they primarily address technology development. A more challenging acceptance in the field of research communication is the development of commercial business models. During the development and testing of the innovation process, the stages of the Delft Design Guide as one popular handbook in the field. The development phases were used as a guidance and orientation."

No abstract