A Dissertation Exploring the Issues Surrounding the Rapid Development of Information Appliances by Designers

 

This PhD by published works dissertation includes seven peer reviewed

publications. The author uses selected papers to demonstrate the novelty

of the work, summarising papers' findings and illustrating as appropriate.

The Introduction explains the way in which the work has developed, its

focus and the raison d'etre for the order in which the papers are

presented.

Contribution to New Knowledge briefly summarises the contribution of

the outputs individually and collectively to the author's chosen field.

The Background chapter explains the work's origins, how the author

became interested in the field, how he developed his initial interests into

a research topic and the timescale of events. Two papers; The Virtual

Environment in Design Projects (1999) and Designing a Learning

Environment for Three Dimensional Thinkers (2000) are used as

reference material.

In the Current Practice and Application chapter the work of other

researchers relevant to the field of enquiry and the current practices of

the design and manufacturing industry are discussed. References to

papers included in this submission are cited as necessary.

The IE System; Origins and First Workable Manifestations chapter

describes how the various elements of the system came together to form

one coherent methodology. The chapter details how the work progressed

from early manifestations and describes the development of the IE2 and

IE3.

The Trials and Empirical Performance Measurement chapter uses material

from two papers: The Traditional Design Process Versus a New Design

Methodology: A Comparative Case Study of a Rapidly Designed

Information Appliance and Rapid Development of Tangible Interactive

Appliances: Achieving the Fidelity / Time Balance. Through reference to

these papers the author summarises the results of the various trials

described in detail within them.

The dissertation concludes by describing the latest and future work with

colleagues at Lancaster University and Sony-Ericsson. The IE4, IE5 and

IE6 are described and the plans for the future research are discussed.