Smart mobile and wearable technology offers exciting opportunities to support people with dementia (PwD). Its ubiquity and popularity could even benefit user adoption – a great challenge for assistive technology (AT) for PwD that calls for user-centred design (UCD) methods. This study describes a user-centred approach to developing and testing AT based on off-the-shelf pervasive technologies. A prototype is created by combining a smartphone, smartwatch and various applications to offer six support features. This is tested among five end-users (PwD) and their caregivers. Controlled usability testing was followed by field testing in a real-world context. Data is gathered from video recordings, interaction logs, system usability scale questionnaires, logbooks, application usage logs and interviews structured on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model. The data is analysed to evaluate usability, usefulness and user acceptance. Results show some promise for user adoption, but highlight challenges to be overcome, emphasising personalisation and familiarity as key considerations. The complete findings regarding usability issues, usefulness of support features and four identified adoption profiles are used to provide a set of recommendations for practitioners and further research. These contribute toward UCD practices for improved smart, pervasive AT for dementia.

-In this paper, the need for automated transportation systems for hospitals is investigated. Among other alternatives, mobile robots stand out as the most prominent means of automation of transportation tasks in hospitals.Existing transportation routines of a hospital are analyzed in order to verify the need for automation and identify possible areas of improvement. The analysis shows that most of the existing transportation is carried out manually, and hospitals can greatly benefit from automated transportation. Based on the results of the analysis, three alternatives are derived for implementing mobile service robots for transportation tasks in hospitals.

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Prototyping is an essential activity in product development, but novice designers lack awareness and purpose when they prototype. To foster prototyping mindsets in novice designers, we introduce a prototyping support tool that structures prototyping activities. This paper outlines the Prototyping Planner's development, evolution, and evaluation by 125 novice designers. The majority of novice designers’ experienced that the Prototyping Planner helped them create purposeful prototypes and evaluate results from prototyping.

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This paper provides a study of prototyping; with the aim of understanding how the fidelity of prototypes affects inputs by users. During development of a mechatronic padlock, 4 physical prototypes at varying fidelity were fabricated. 66 interviews with users were conducted. Users were presented with 1 of the 4 prototypes. The study finds; fidelity of prototypes affects users' feedback. Though not linearly and without unambiguity. This underlining the complexity of prototyping. A better understanding of how prototypes are perceived can help designers in establishing prototyping strategies.

This study explores the value of visualizing the prototyping activities in a new product development process from idea to production. Through a case study of a hardware startup, we present a retrospective and longitudinal study of their prototyping processes, from early idea to the introduction of several product generations to market. We call the visualization technique ProtoMapping, and we use the qualitative and quantitative data captured by the ProtoMap to understand how prototyping strategies change over the course of product development processes. Specifically, we focus on the prototyping of parallel concepts, iterations of concepts, manufacturing processes used for prototypes, prototype media, prototype tests, as well as prototyping of isolated or integrated systems. On the basis of this longitudinal analysis, we present a number of insights that were possible to uncover with ProtoMapping. We observe how parallel prototypes of isolated systems can be used to explore the solution space and later be synthesized into prototypes for integrated systems. Furthermore, we understand how the need to scale up production can lead to increased prototyping activities, as several parts of a product must be redesigned. This study illustrates the utility of a retrospective visualization approach and serves as the first step in formulation of generalized guidelines for prototyping strategies in holistic product development.

This paper provides an empirical review of the reward-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com, with the aim to explore and identify challenges in crowdfunded product development, which consequently can lead to failure of the crowdfunding campaign. The review was based on the analysis of a total of 144 successfully funded ‘technology’ campaigns, which all concerned the creation of physical consumer hardware preordered by campaign backers. The analysis was built around a failure mode model, which was established through a pre-study. The study reveals that (i) no more than 32% of the campaigns managed to deliver the crowdfunded products on time, and, if campaigns are delayed, (ii) there is a significantly higher probability that the delivered products might lack expected attributes. The causes for delay have many reasons, but (iii) a set of particular product development issues were identified as the main challenges. A better understanding of crowdfunded product development can help researchers and practitioners to better understand and utilize the opportunities of this new product development paradigm.