V cycle VI cycle VII cycle VIII cycle IX cycle X cycle XI cycle XII cycle XIII cycle

V cycle Silvia Pizzocaro Evolutionary approaches to the analysis of products and technical systems The dissertation outlines an evolutionary theory of processes of change involving the development of artificial products and technical systems. Selected single products as well as families of products and productive and technological systems are conceptually analysed in their relevant phases of development, proposing a revisitation of their evolution based on the analogies derived either from natural sciences in general or from classical darwinism in particular. The approach is coherent with the context and cultural paradigm where the systemic general theories of evolution are embedded, providing a temptative step to the definition of an evolutionary theory of artificial products and technical systems. The applied methodology largely refers to the use of analogic procedures: elements of classical darwinian fundamentals, as well as parts of theories derived from the modern synthesis or even contemporary evolutionary contributions, serve as elements of comparison to be applied to technology. The work is divided into two sections. The former, articulated into three chapters, gathers a number of theoretical contributions to the issue, either rendering the tradition of research developed on the analogy between biology and technology and selecting contributions derived from transdisciplinary approaches. The latter is developed in four chapters, selecting and perusing from an evolutionary perspective four relevant topics of technological change: the generation of artificial variety, the genealogies of artifical products, the continuity and discontinuity of technological change, the relation with the external environments. advisor: Ezio Manzini Raimonda Riccini The household appliances in the history of artifacts The work deals with the history of a family of technical objects - the household electric appliances - particularly meaningful within contemporary material culture and, at the same time, extremely significant for industrial design culture. Articulated in single issues rather than chronological sections, the analysis starts with a theoretic chapter outlining the context at the debate concerning artifacts developed in the the last two centuries. In the following chapters, the history of the different types of household electric appliances is examined strictly in connection with the development of technological innovation and with the contributions from industrial design. The dynamics of the interrelations between technological and housing aspects is then developed moving from the notions of micro-environment and of daily life technology. In this context the household electric appliances are also examined as a system of values and as a set of communication factors, and the survey eventually concludes considering their function in the utopian imagination (the house of the future). advisor: Tomàs Maldonado VI cycle Davide Bruno Project in Progress/Continuous Design: Analysis, Scenarios and Perspectives for the Industrial Products Design Management The research has, as main hypotesis, the evaluation of industrial products design evolution systems in particular, and concerns the key aspects and problems in the industrial design development in the next years. All aspects related to "Continuous Design Process" are approached in an evolutive way when compared to today design "action". The objectives in the research consist of the general configuration of the contlnuous design in order to realize industrial products where their life time could be extended. Continuous design can be defined as a continuous process to define industrial products systems; The general arrangement of the extensive continuous design has to be considered as a necessary approach from the designer "responsible" who should plan a reduction of products categories. We considered the possibility to approach the continuous design further the product up to also design the service. According to this concept we should consider a different organization for suppliers, distribution network and sales and also establish an aftersales plan, and a marketing layout according to a whole coherent strategy. One more objective within this research is to create the conditions to introduce effectively the concept of a long term continuus design. advisor: Francesco Trabucco Giulio Ceppi The deferred senses. Design and new models of perception in the mass media society The research contributes to an overview about modalities of perceiving external reality as a consequence of the increasing role of electronic media and as a direct effect on the present evaluation of industrial products. As a matter of fact, the new role played by electronic media is deeply affecting the design process, increasingly appearing as an "a priori" issue on one side and, on the other, definitively interacting with the perception of objects themselves. The system of products and the system of images merge into a new dimension, providing an exciting challenge to the way we are used to classify the external world: the body becomes a commodity among commodities, sensoriality is translated into a commercial item. Designing in a deferred reality means to convert the product into the result of material and unmaterial dimensions, transforming production, communication, distribution and service into components of the notion of product, shaping a new space frame for design. The research includes a glossary on deferred reality. advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Nicola Morelli Innovation and Environment. Innovative Mechanisms and Changes in Products and in Production System on the Emerging of the Environmental Question. Innovative mechanisms and transformations of the product and the production system in consequence of the emerging of the environmental problems The work has been organized in two parts: A first part in which the relationship between the environmental question and innovation is analysed. In this part the most relevant theoretical contributions are outlined to define the innovation machanisms in the economic and technological system. At the same time the emerging issues in the debate on the environmental question have been talken into consideration. A second part in which the innovation in products and in the production system is analysed. By means of this analysis we can outline a frame of the environmental initiative in the production of complex durable goods. We used this frame to work out the on-going tendencies in the production and consumption system. advisor: Ezio Manzini VII cycle Valeria Bucchetti Packaging and Product Identity. How the Product Self-Communicates The purpose of this thesis is a reinterpretation of the packaging artefact in view of a theory of a visual communication design of semiotic inspiration. We will move from a recording of state of the art packaging and from a detailed observation of the various facets and shades of the goods circulation field up to their encounter with the consumer and over. This works intents to elaborate a definition of an articultaed system for the deconstruction of the packaging artefact in its constituant components. This analytical system proposes to be a tentative reference towards a theory of the project. advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Raffaella Mangiarotti Strategic management of the environmental quality of products: Theory and praxis advisor: Francesco Trabucco Francesco Murano The images of light The thesis is intended to elaborate an eidetic discipline of light, meant as matter of design manipulation, aimed at isolating single lighting units in the perceptive continuum, which have to be considered as elements of a potential light syntaxis. Such a continuum, according to the dissertation assumptions, is articulated in two levels: the one linked to the visibility lights gives to space - to be defined as atmospheric - and the ostentative one of light in space. referring to the second level in particular, events were investigated in the history of theatre and show, capable of witnessing the intentional use of perceptively identifiable lighting elements in the tridimensional dimension. The thesis is elaborated according to three separate complementary levels: analysis of lexical and figurative catalogues of artistic experiences of the use of light; the formulation of a poetics of semantic categories and images of light. As a conclusion the possibility of assuming an eidetic discipline of light is confirmed, together with an increase of the development of lighting theory and practice, seen from a different perspective. advisor: Ezio Manzini Monica Costanza Pratesi Environment, Products and Standardization. Standardization as a Tool of Environmental Policy in Industrial Product Development The thesis deals with the topic of standardization, aiming at sustaining its innovative role as an instrument of environmental policy. The standardization is considered as a central factor in industrialization, being renewed by the present relevant changes taking place in the techno-economic dimension and resulting from the environmental question. The core of the thesis develops a long digression of historical nature in order to analyse the trasformations of the notion of standard. In its historical phase, rationalization implies the birth of rather firm standards, due to the limitations of industrial mechanization. In present days standardization has radically changed this aspect, adapting to a more fluid form of rationalization and obtained thanks to flexibility rather than rigidity. The thesis assumes that stadardization keeps on being - although the macroscopic changes in production processes - a central element in industrial production. In particular, it is a suitable possible strategy to cope with the environmental question: thus turning into a very modern strategy Such a possibility is strictly connected to the correct a priori design of the industrial product, aimed at reaching results at any level of production and consumption in order to decrease the global impact on the environment. advisor: Tomàs Maldonado VIII cycle Roberto De Paolis Morphogenesis and project The thesis proposes an enlarged overview on the fundamentals and methodologies at the basis of the synthesis of the object formal qualities within the design process of industrial products, in relation to the contemporary epistemological changes and to the scientific and experimental developments in morphology research. The core of the thesis - while moving from the traditional attribution to products of formal qualities based on to estethic and perceptive elements - is oriented towards a wider assumption of the "project" as a logical operator of evolutive dynamics in progress, witnessing a shift from the classical notions of shape and morphology to the one of morphogenesis, derived from biological sciences. Within the notion of "project" meant as a control procedure of morphogenesis dynamics in natural and artificial environment, the thesis provides a selection of some relevant issues related to the trasversality of interdisciplinary contributes, disciplines of reference belonging to several scientific areas, from science and art to technics and the history of things. advisor: Celestino Soddu Pietro Montefusco Digital multimediality and Evolution of Media Outline: Communicative Artefacts and Design Tools The premise of the research work lies in the consideration of the state of need presented by the design sector of the communicative artefacts based on digital technologies (on off-line support, CD-ROM, or on-line, Internet). The research moved from a terminology analysis, aimed at clarifying either the utilization of terms with different acceptions, or to look for the basic concepts of a still young design discipline. A further step was meant to identify a media catalogation system, capable of overpassing the generic attribution of unprecise interactivity, bringing to an even less defined form of "new". The final phase of the investigation involved the design and production process modeling of these artefacts, together with the analysis of production tools available on the market. The whole work is kept together by the desire to define the relation attributes capable of qualifying such kind of artefacts, so strongly based on "time": in this sense they introduce a critical element in the usual tools design has developed for artefacts based on "space". advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Antonella Penati The Path of innovation. A systemic approach to the processes of technological change advisor: Tomàs Maldonado Heloisa Ponzo Dutra Implications of Technological Transfer and Diffusion Processes in Developing Countries: The Evolution and Development of Refrigeration Technologies in Brasil The thesis is meant to analyse the cricuial question of the activity of industrial design in peripheral countries, being industrial design intended as the design of dependency, adaptation, transfer and translation. Moving from the critical interpretation of the relative literature - either in the sense of theoretical premises of the marginal condition of industrial design and the context of reference of industrialization in Latin America - the possible socio-cultural implications connected to economic and political factors were object of survey. In vertu of a critical vision of utilitarism some key concepts of an ethic evaluation of disegality and social comfort were attentively perused. advisor: Celestino Soddu Claudia Raimondo Redefining the Notion of Habitat The core matter of the thesis deals with the notion of habitat, investigated - within the research boundaries - in relation to specific trajectories, so to reach a redefinition of the notion itself facing the present global context (the one of the transition towards environmental sustainability) and the emerging epistemological scenario (the one of evolutionary sciences). Among the plenty of terms suitable to be used to indicate the environment and its relations with the subject, the notion of habitat was chosen in vertu of a twofold explanation. On one side it makes available a constant reference to the context of design disciplines while focusing on the problem and cultural dimensions qualifing the use of this term in different historical phases. On the other side, it appears as a useful conceptual tool, implying a dialogic and complex vision of the environmental issues and pinpointing the centrality of the relations among different design scales: between subject and object, habitat and inhabitants and among different sibjects. advisor: Ezio Manzini IX cycle Gianluca Brugnoli The Firm as a Social Actor. Corporate Participative Strategies Between Marketplace and Society. The Socially and Environmentally Responsible Business Case. The research proposes a strategic point of view of the relations between firms and their context with a systemic description of the business changes, mainly focused on the conditions and the tools used to build the company's market proposition. In particular some representative case studies of socially responsible companies are presented, having developed an interpretative and design model of the relations between firm and context based on the stakeholding concept. Further, the model is compared with some of the most innovative concepts and experiences emerging in the business world. From a disciplinary point of view, the research starts from the debate on Design Management and Strategic Design, proposing a complex and systemic approach to the market relations of the "corporate product", looking for new skills and tools for a strategic designer. advisor: Francesco Mauri Angel Cerejo Rojbas Industrial handcrafts. Spain-Italy: two approaches to the economy of design Market changes, new technologies, social conditioning and an increased responsibility towards improving the quality of life and of the environment, have provoked a crisis in production systems and a "separation" between firms and products. In order to adapt, firms are forced to analyze not only aspects of production but to consider also other intangible factors - design management - such as management, both financial and production, information systems, communication of products, product innovation, company's image and relationship with the community. Production plants and equipment have lost the importance they once held in firms as more and more use is made of external suppliers, thus dividing and co-ordinating the project with other firms and also dividing the risk. The evolution of the project (industrial design) has been studied, analyzing and comparing Italian and Spanish industrial districts because industrial regions are more advanced in the processes of learning by co-operating, and they possess a better sense of affiliation with the community (use of local resources, relationship with the environment and with the consumer). This analysis was made concurrently with a overview of current concerning studies together with a critic study of the politics of public European institutions assigned to promoting social and economic welfare and consequent frequent verifications of the formulated hypotheses through in depth researches on the field and personal interviews to achieve the due scientific rigor. A new production scenery emerged, in which a large firm like an Industrial Craftsmanship retailing the final product, manages smaller entities which in turn contribute with their own core capabilities. In this way the firm, free of productive problems, can dedicate more attention to customer satisfaction. This scenario surpasses the traditional craftsman or industrial concepts of production and is able to immediately favour the needs of the consumer and to guarantee a better guardianship of the environment. In the pledge to improve the quality of life and satisfy customer expectations, the project (industrial design) - as responsible of the entire life cycle of the product - promises new perspectives and becomes the first to be responsible of the innovation of the product, of its communication, of environmental choices of the productive entities and of company's global quality. advisor: Francesco Trabucco Giovanni Giacobone The design of innovation. The white household appliances advisor: Francesco Trabucco Stefano Maffei Digital Artefacts: The Life of the New Objects Between Language and Socio Technical System This work tries to focus the disciplinary debate upon the evolution of the so called theme of the objets techniques: It wants to demonstrate the new perspectives on an analytical research which uses the framework model of situated evolution either of the products system (constituted by bigital artefacts) or of the technoeconomic paradigm, and also the sociotechnical set up. Moreover at the macroscale level, it describes a phylogenetic trajectory, a kind of phylum macchinicum, that resembles a nearly cognitive model of evolution. In a disciplinary view the thesis analyses these artefacts typology (the digital family of artefacts) and the links with the production and goods system. It proposes, in this way, a model of interpretation of the technical sphere as an immersive ambient with certain characteristics that make it similar to linguistic and cognitive world. advisor: Ezio Manzini Dina Riccò The sound of new media. The Sound of the New Media. A synesthetic approach to the phenomenons of sensorial interaction in the multimedial softwares. This dissertation has devoted to the study of the sensorial interactions - in a particular way of the synesthetic phenomenons - that they are activated in the fruition of any categories of new media. The attention has addressed to those media - as the multimedial systems and of virtual reality- that, exploiting informatics technologies, they allow the orchestration of sensorial heterogeneous registers. To the inside of the products of the multimedial systems and of virtual reality has stayed delineated a run that considers the role of the sound in the communicative processes, above all in relationship to the concomitant sensorial visual data. The cases study in examination concern musical software. Two is the principal thesis supported beginning from which has stayed mailed all the work of search. In first place the conviction that the possibilities granted from the informatic media of manipulate and integrate more categories of sensorial data - above all auditory- they promote the activation of synesthetic processes, that is of mechanisms - perceptive and representative - in which it happens a particular relationship of cause and effect between senses and sensorial data. A second thesis, tightly dependent from the first, it supports that the planning of the messages communicated from these new media, they require a particular attention to the processes of interaction that between the varieties sensorial registers are activated. It is not therefore possible think about the planning of multimedial messages simply like approach, or sum, of registers and languages, because also the direct stimuli to an only sense, in virtue of the unity of ours sensory, they interact sensorial systems with the remainders. advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Pedro Uriel Sanchez Design approach in the domain of cultural identity. Features for the configuration of new perspectives in industrial design to be applied in education advisor: Giovanni Anceschi X cycle Fiammetta Costa Product, production system, environment. Towards a sustainable development of industry The issue of this dissertation is to explore the intersection field between industrial design and environmental design. The general goal is to give a theoretical contribution, and a set of operative tools to manage a sustainable changing of the industrial products and of the whole production system. Here, thanks to the choice of limiting the analysis to the system of material end energy flows in particular, it is possible to isolate and to deal in integrated way with all major problems related on the one hand to major consumption of resources and energy and on the other hand to the generation of emissions and waste. To this purpose the different strategies used to influence environmental quality, ranging from regulations and economics instrument to evaluation methodologies (i.e. Environmental Assessment and Life Cycle Assessment) are analysed and compared. The argumentation reaches the conclusion that there isn’t a specific tool to apply in order to achieve sustainable development of industry, but a set of different instruments that can help on that way if they are correctly used. advisor: Medardo Chiapponi Catia Olivetti The technological transfer as innovation factor advisor: Medardo Chiapponi Elena Pacenti Designing interaction in services. A contribute to the issue of service design The thesis focuses on the design of services bringing a new approach and new design tools. The aim of the thesis is to enrich the actual debate on service design, mainly based on technical and organizational aspects, bformulating conceptual and operating tools to design the qualitative and cultural dimension of services. The focus is on the concept of interaction: the interaction between the service and the user is the key aspect of the service supply, moving the theme of service design from the design of the internal organizational system towards the design of its interface with users. The design of the service interface includes the design of the functional and communicative elements that support and facilitate the user interaction.The direct analogy with the discipline of interface design for interactive and complex products is the method used to identify new design tools and guidelines for service interface design. The conceptual and operating tools for service interface design are proposed as the basis for a specific competence to be included within the wider service design process. advisor: Ezio Manzini XI cycle Antonio Galeano Interface model for the design of industrial artifacts advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Gianluca Sgalippa The environment of networks advisor: Alessandro Ubertazzi Francesco Zurlo A model for interpretation of strategic design. The relationship between design and strategy in contemporary firm advisor: Ezio Manzini XII cycle Annalisa Dominoni Industrial design for space Designing for space means starting anew, applying a different logic for a different environment, conceiving new instruments for user and activities that Earth dwellers have difficulty in envisaging, but which on the whole presuppose a different relationship between our bodies, the objects, and the surronding space. The aim of this thesis is underline why the designer must really become a central figure in space research programs that involve human presence focussing the attention on the importance of theoretical and methodological approach "half way between design and human sciences" to increase the comfort and the well-being of living in space. advisor: Francesco Trabucco Paola Trapani Shaping narratives. A heuristic project tool. advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Anna Meroni Designed Food. A New Field of Application for Industrial Design advisor: Giorgio Longoni XIII cycle Laura Anselmi Ergonomics of industrial products. What is meant for quality of use and how is it verified The research wants to point out the increasingly synergic relationship between industrial design and ergonomic methodologies. Knowing that the new century has started giving the product a new centrality, an active role and in which the product itself, loaded with meanings and responsibilities, is required to respond giving precise answers to a careful and demanding consumer, the research aims to clarify the contributions that ergonomics can furnish for optimising design methodology, finalized to attaining a quality of use of the product that reflects the quality of life expressed by the consumer himself. In a context of deep transformations inside the system company-product-market, the ergonomic approach becomes the best methodological tool not only to investigate the aspects of quality related to commercial, productive, service and environmental processes, but also involved with the consumer’s personal sphere as an impulse toward innovation and design set out to the consumer’s comfort and safety. The objective is to define exactly what is meant for a product’s quality of use and hence verify it, thanks to a new matrix laid out to be applied to the product itself and understand if it has been designed according to ergonomic principles finalized to the consumer’s comfort during its entire lifecycle. advisor: Francesco Trabucco Paola Bertola Design knowledge management advisor:Giuliano Simonelli Letizia Bollini Multimodal Directing The thesis states and defines the concept of multimodal directoring within the framework of new media. Using an historical, critical and open approach in an interdisciplinary context, the thesis analyses the role that design disciplines play in the design of interfaces. The design disciplines are presented as a system of directing design for the modalities and for the languages for every (different) communication channel, integrated in a global medium. advisor: Giovanni Anceschi Stefania Palmieri Designing with the client advisor: Roberto Verganti