ASDesign: A User-Centered Method for the Design of Assistive Technology That Helps Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Be More Independent in Their Daily Routines

COVID-19 has posed new physical and mental challenges for the population worldwide, establishing social and structural changes in the labor market that could be maintained and implemented permanently. This new reality will require new strategies to improve family and work conciliation, which is especially challenging for families with children suffering from psychological pathologies such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These changes have led to more frequent and intense behavioral problems, causing stress, anxiety, and confusion for these children and their families. Thus, the need to have tools that help parents reconcile work with the care of these children, who have low autonomy, is reinforced. This work develops a method for the design of assistive technology and smart products to support children with ASD in following a routine and managing tasks autonomously. In this way, the article analyzes the design problem including the needs and preferences of children with ASD and their parents during confinement in terms of dependence and adaptability; develops a design method for interactive and smart products focused on children with ASD in confinement situations; and validates this method in a case study, in which a robot is developed that makes it easier for children with ASD to follow a routine.

Electrical Resistivity of Conductive Leather and Influence of Air Temperature and Humidity

Leather is a material that has been used in different applications for centuries. Today, living in the era of high-tech¬nology, we are surrounded by smart products. For this reason, traditional products must be changed or im¬proved in order to support and make us more comfortable while using them. For instance, the touch screen display in electronics products is a smart phone’s or a tablet computer’s primary input device. Still, traditional leather will not function properly in a cold climate or other specific conditions. To make it conductive in such conditions, the double in-situ polymerization of the pyrrole coating method was used. The aim of this study was to observe the electrical properties of conductive leather. At the same time, it stands up to a wide range of different air temperatures, and relative and absolute humidity. These properties are essential because de¬signers and textile engineers should be familiar with them when they decide to use materials in different smart products. Electricity conductivity tests were carried out in year-round temperatures from 7.5 °C to 28.1 °C, with a relative humidity from 18% to 77% and a vapor air concentration from 2.77 g/kg to 12.46 g/kg. The so-called “multiple-step method” was used to test leather’s electrical resistivity for the first time. The method considers a material’s compressional properties and provides an indicator inherent for a material’s electrical properties, regardless of the mass and shape of samples. The results showed a strong dependence between water vapor air concentration and electrical resistivity, described using the formula ρ = 1.3103 H−1.04 Ωm, with a correlation coefficient of 0.87. There was no relation between relative humidity and electrical resistivity, and resistivity and air temperature. Also, the results confirmed again that changes in the shape of the sample used during tests did not influence the measurement’s results, but supported the appropriateness of the measuring method.

Changeability and agility enablers in one-of-a-kind product development and design processes

The smart factories that are already beginning to appear employ a completely new approach to product creation. Smart products are uniquely identifiable and know both their current status and alternative routes to achieving their target state. Smart factories allow individual customer requirements to be met, meaning that even one-off items can be manufactured profitably. In smart industry, dynamic business and engineering processes enable last-minute changes to design and production, delivering the ability to respond flexibly to disruptions and failures on behalf of suppliers. This paper presents a case study of product development and design process renovation according to changeability paradigm in one-of-a-kind industrial environment. It demonstrates how integration of changeability with agile design strategies crucially contribute to improve the operations of a highly individualized product development business. Successful management of ‘never-ending’ engineering changes appears to be the most important aspect in this field. Contribution of the presented work is a generalized framework that demonstrates how companies in such specific environments can improve competitiveness through the utilization of changeability concepts. The included case study validated the proposed changeability model and offers valuable insights into how to implement this in practice.

The Digitalization Principles from a User- Centered Design Perspective: A Conceptual Framework for Smart Product Development

The industry relies on interdisciplinarity to promote advancements. The diverse engineering domains, information technologies, management and social sciences are combined in the industrial environment and oriented o society’s ever-changing demands. In parallel, the demographic shifts caused by population aging present room for innovation on many fronts, such as in health, technology, industry, products, and services, and in the same way in product development processes. In an attempt to tackle such issues, this article discusses how the addressing of the elderly population demands, particularly the demand for smart products, might be supported by the principles of production digitalization. In doing so, it proposes a conceptual framework for the development of smart products for the elderly, sustained by three core pillars: specific product lifecycle stages, Industrie 4.0 requirements for smart product development; and Industrie 4.0 enabling technologies which are integrated by the User-Centered Design philosophy. Their combination into a framework aims at addressing two main points: assist in the translation of elderly real consumers’ expectations and demands into more adequate, appealing products and in creating a transition path for companies who wish to incorporate the principles and technologies of production digitalization in their value chain. Furthermore, the article discusses how this proposal could be validated in the real industrial environment.