Isil
One of my former PhD students, Dr Eujin Pei, developed a card-based tool to support collaboration between industrial designers and engineering designers during new product development. The PhD was awarded in 2009.
The tool was validated through case-studies and surveys but, in order to do this, the research data had to be translated into a product (two sets of cards) that could be used during professional practice. Whilst I'm quite confident that it would have been possible to articulate the research findings as a list of recommendations, we chose to translate them into a viable product that could be validated. This required Dr Pei to use his capability as a designer to create the 116 cards and, in addition to my role as academic supervisor, it was also necessary to provide feedback on the design proposals. This relates back to the thread I started back in November 2009 in which I raised the issue of the need for supervisors of PhD's that include practice to have experience or expertise in practice.
Dr Pei's thesis is available from the Loughborough University Institutional Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/2134/5432
And, as David Durling mentioned it in his contribution to this thread, my thesis is also available from the Institutional Repository at http://hdl.handle.net/2134/5155 but unfortunately Dr Owain Pedgley's is not.
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