Design for communication: how do demonstrators demonstrate technology?

Abstract

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.

A Value-Driven Design Approach for the Virtual Verification and Validation of Autonomous Vehicle Solutions

“…The goal with the development of the V6 was to create a 'demonstrator', which has a primary use as communication tool, to provide evidence of product benefits (see Bobbe et al 2023). The V6 is mostly aimed at communicating the hypothesis that value models are beneficial to shape the virtual V&V strategy for AVS, rather than at evaluating such hypothesis.…”

“…Being a demonstrator and not a fullfledged prototype, the V6 wants to engage practitioners and experts in providing cues on how to interact with qualitative value models, so to better understand (and lower the barrier related to) how to introduce a value thinking in the V&V task. The design principle of 'try' (see: Bobbe et al 2023) was at the core of every iteration of the tool, which was first and foremostly designed with the intention of letting the potential users to try the solution and experience it first-hand.…”

Demystifying the design process of demonstrators: contextual inquiry of two cases

“…Such objects are demonstrators, tangible objects combining design, art, and engineering. Coming from innovative technology research, they communicate it to non-academic stakeholders (Bobbe et al, 2023). Scientists use demonstrators to make their research visible and support bringing it from laboratory to market.…”

Interaction and Affect are Key: Understanding Technology Demonstrators for Science Communication on Dialogue Events

“…One potentially effective, but hitherto almost unexplored medium for science communication is the technology demonstrator -an interactive out-of-the-lab artifact that embodies and communicates cutting-edge technological research (Bobbe et al, 2023; latter, narrower definition, as our research investigates demonstrator-based science communication at dialogue events as part of the strategic communication from institutionalized science.…”

“…Technology demonstrators are designed artefacts that evolve during scientific and industrial research and development of technology. They embody, evaluate, and most importantly communicate scientific results and technologies under development -or more general: ideas about a near future (Bobbe et al, 2023). Moultrie (2016) explored the multitude of purposes that demonstrators incorporate.…”