Rating for sustainable subdivision neighbourhood design (RSSND) : case of Bangkok metropolitan region (BMR), Thailand an eco-efficiency modelling approach

Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) is the centre for various major activities in Thailand including political, industry, agriculture, and commerce. Consequently, the BMR is the highest and most densely populated area in Thailand. Thus, the demand for houses in the BMR is also the largest, especially in subdivision developments. For these reasons, the subdivision development in the BMR has increased substantially in the past 20 years and generated large numbers of subdivision developments (AREA, 2009; Kridakorn Na Ayutthaya & Tochaiwat, 2010). However, this dramatic growth of subdivision development has caused several problems including unsustainable development, especially for subdivision neighbourhoods, in the BMR. There have been rating tools that encourage the sustainability of neighbourhood design in subdivision development, but they still have practical problems. Such rating tools do not cover the scale of the development entirely; and they concentrate more on the social and environmental conservation aspects, which have not been totally accepted by the developers (Boonprakub, 2011; Tongcumpou & Harvey, 1994). These factors strongly confirm the need for an appropriate rating tool for sustainable subdivision neighbourhood design in the BMR. To improve level of acceptance from all stakeholders in subdivision developments industry, the new rating tool should be developed based on an approach that unites the social, environmental, and economic approaches, such as eco-efficiency principle. Eco-efficiency is the sustainability indicator introduced by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) since 1992. The eco-efficiency is defined as the ratio of the product or service value according to its environmental impact (Lehni & Pepper, 2000; Sorvari et al., 2009). Eco-efficiency indicator is concerned to the business, while simultaneously, is concerned with to social and the environment impact. This study aims to develop a new rating tool named "Rating for sustainable subdivision neighbourhood design (RSSND)". The RSSND methodology is developed by a combination of literature reviews, field surveys, the eco-efficiency model development, trial-and-error technique, and the tool validation process. All required data has been collected by the field surveys from July to November 2010. The ecoefficiency model is a combination of three different mathematical models; the neighbourhood property price (NPP) model, the neighbourhood development cost (NDC) model, and the neighbourhood occupancy cost (NOC) model which are attributable to the neighbourhood subdivision design. The NPP model is formulated by hedonic price model approach, while the NDC model and NOC model are formulated by the multiple regression analysis approach. The trial-and-error technique is adopted for simplifying the complex mathematic eco-efficiency model to a user-friendly rating tool format. Credibility of the RSSND has been validated by using both rated and non-rated of eight subdivisions. It is expected to meet the requirements of all stakeholders which support the social activities of the residents, maintain the environmental condition of the development and surrounding areas, and meet the economic requirements of the developers.

Construct design for efficient, effective and high-throughput gene silencing in plants

Post-transcriptional silencing of plant genes using anti-sense or co-suppression constructs usually results in only a modest proportion of silenced individuals. Recent work has demonstrated the potential for constructs encoding self-complementary 'hairpin' RNA (hpRNA) to efficiently silence genes. In this study we examine design rules for efficient gene silencing, in terms of both the proportion of independent transgenic plants showing silencing, and the degree of silencing. Using hpRNA constructs containing sense/anti-sense arms ranging from 98 to 853 nt gave efficient silencing in a wide range of plant species, and inclusion of an intron in these constructs had a consistently enhancing effect. Intron-containing constructs (ihpRNA) generally gave 90-100% of independent transgenic plants showing silencing. The degree of silencing with these constructs was much greater than that obtained using either co-suppression or anti-sense constructs. We have made a generic vector, pHANNIBAL, that allows a simple, single PCR product from a gene of interest to be easily converted into a highly effective ihpRNA silencing construct. We have also created a high-throughput vector, pHELLSGATE, that should facilitate the cloning of gene libraries or large numbers of defined genes, such as those in EST collections, using an in vitro recombinase system. This system may facilitate the large-scale determination and discovery of plant gene functions in the same way as RNAi is being used to examine gene function in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Product ecosystems : an emerging methodological approach to study the implementation of disruptive innovations : the case of the CityCar

The car has arguably had more influence on our lifestyle and urban environment than any other consumer product; allowing unprecedented freedom for living, working and recreation where and when we choose. However, problems of pollution, congestion, road trauma, inefficient land use and social inequality are associated with car use. Despite 100 years of design and technology refinements, the aforementioned problems are significant and persistent: many argue that resolving these problems requires a fundamental redesign of the car. Redesigned vehicles have been proposed such as the MIT CityCar and others such as the Renault Twizy, commercialized. None however have successfully brought about significant change and the study of disruptive innovation offers an explanation for this. Disruptive innovation, by definition, disrupts a market. It also disrupts the product ecosystem. The existing product ecosystem has co-evolved to support the conventional car and is not optimized for the new design: which will require a redesigned ecosystem to support it. A literature review identifies a lack of methodology for identifying the components of product ecosystems and the changes required for disruptive innovation implementation. This paper proposes such a methodology based on Design Thinking, Actor Network Theory, Disruptive Innovation and the CityCar scenarios.

"Show me, how does it look now" : remote help-giving in collaborative design

This paper examines the role of visual information in a remote help-giving situation involving the collaborative physical task of designing a prototype remote control. We analyze a set of video recordings captured within an experimental setting. Our analysis shows that using gestures and relevant artefacts and by projecting activities on the camera, participants were able to discuss several design-related issues. The results indicate that with a limited camera view (mainly faces and shoulders), participants' conversations were centered at the physical prototype that they were designing. The socially organized use of our experimental setting provides some key implications for designing future remote collaborative systems.

Sustaining social innovation enterprises through a design led innovation framework

Constant changes in the global economic environment require companies to revisit traditional assumptions about how businesses create and capture value (Teece, 2010). In recent years, management practice literature has focused largely on better understanding business models and business model innovation (Amit, Zott and Massa, 2010; Johnson, Christensen and Kagermann, 2008). Much has been written on the benefits of linking design and design thinking to organisational strategies and business transformation. However, very little has been researched and reported on regarding the impact of design led approaches to triple bottom-line opportunities such as, social innovation enterprise. In the context of this paper Design Led Innovation is defined as the tools and approaches which enable design thinking to be embedded as an element of cultural transformation within a business. Being Design Led requires a company to have a vision for top line growth founded on deep customer insights and expanded through customer and stakeholder engagements. The outcomes of this are then mapped to all aspects of the business, enabling the vision to be successfully implemented and achieved. It is the latter part of this definition where we believe Design Led Innovation has the greatest value in transforming social innovation enterprise into a sustainable business venture. However, we also acknowledge that enabling these firms to think strategically about their business model is difficult given the unique operational and funding challenges that often characterize many social enterprises. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to pose the question, do sustainable innovation enterprise innovate their business model? And if so, how? It is the authors’ opinion that such enterprises only innovate at the product or system level without a complete understanding of the business model structure, which underpins the long term viability. However, in this paper we challenge this notion and explore if such firms can overcome their size and operational constraints to become sustainable enterprises using a design led approach. This is achieved through contextualizing business model innovation, briefly defining social innovation enterprise and profiling a new and emerging industry in Australia – Clean Technology. Future research challenges and opportunities are also presented.

Design Minds Tomorrow's Classroom Toolkit

The Design Minds Tomorrow’s Classroom Toolkit was one of six K7-12 secondary school design toolkits commissioned by the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) Asia Pacific Design Library (APDL), to facilitate the delivery of the Stage 1 launch of its Design Minds online platform (www.designminds.org.au) partnership initiative with Queensland Government Arts Queensland and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, on June 29, 2012. Design Minds toolkits are practical guides, underpinned by a combination of one to three of the Design Minds model phases of ‘Inquire’, ‘Ideate’ and ‘Implement’ (supported by at each stage with structured reflection), to enhance existing school curriculum and empower students with real life design exercises, within the classroom environment. Toolkits directly identify links to Naplan, National Curriculum, C2C and Professional Standards benchmarks, as well as the student capabilities of successful and creative 21st century citizens they seek to engender through design thinking. This toolkit explores, through four distinct exercises, different design tools and ways to approach the future design of environments (classrooms/schools) to facilitate the Reggio Emilia philosophy of learning, while addressing diverse and changing social, cultural, technological and environmental challenges. The Design Minds Tomorrow’s Classroom Toolkit encourages students to explore architecture and interior design, and to think about their (life-long) learning as a product of inspiring interactions with people and the environments around them, and that their potential role in contributing to both delightful and functional design solutions requires a deep understanding of the user experience. More generally, it aims to facilitate awareness in young people, of the role of design in society and the value of design thinking skills in generating strategies to solve basic to complex systemic challenges, as well as to inspire post-secondary pathways and idea generation for education. The toolkit encourages students and teachers to develop sketching, making, communication, presentation and collaboration skills to improve their design process, as well as explore further inquiry (background research) to enhance the ideation exercises. Exercise 1 focuses on the ‘Inquire’ and ‘Ideate’ phases, Exercise 2 on the ‘Inquire’, Exercise 3 builds on ideation skills, and Exercise 4 concentrates on the ‘Implement’ phase. Depending on the intensity of the focus, the unit of work could be developed over a 2-5 week program (approximately 4-10 x 60 minute lessons/workshops) or as smaller workshops treated as discrete learning experiences. The toolkit is available for public download from http://designminds.org.au/tomorrows-classroom/ on the Design Minds website. This toolkit inspired the authorship and facilitation of a 2-day design workshop entitled Learning Environment 2050 at John Paul College, Daisy Hill, Brisbane on the 15-16 August 2013. 120 Grade 7 students and their teachers, under the mentorship of two design academics, 3 QUT design students and a professional architect, as part of a QUT School of Design Project Week community engagement activity, explored the formulation of a participatory design brief for the redesign of the school’s Wesley Precinct (including classrooms, a sustainable farm and recreation areas).

An ontology-based service discovery approach for the provisioning of product-service bundles

More and more traditional manufacturing companies form or join inter-organizational networks to bundle their physical products with related services to offer superior value propositions to their customers. Some of these product-related services can be digitized completely and thus fully delivered electronically. Other services require the physical integration of external factors, but can still be coordinated electronically. In both cases companies and consumers face the problem of discovering appropriate product-related service offerings in the network or market. Based on ideas from the web service discovery discipline we propose a meet-in-the-middle approach between heavy-weight semantic technologies and simple boolean search to address this issue. Our approach is able to consider semantic relations in service descriptions and queries and thus delivers better results than syntax-based search. However – unlike most semantic approaches – it does not require the use of any formal language for semantic markup and thus requires less resources and skills for both service providers and consumers. To fully realize the potentials of the proposed approach a domain ontology is needed. In this research-in-progress paper we construct such an ontology for the domain of product-service bundles through analysis and synthesis of related work on service description. This will serve as an anchor for future research to iteratively improve and evaluate the ontology through collaborative design efforts and practical application.

Design-led innovation : Overcoming challenges to designing competitiveness to succeed in high cost environments

This chapter focuses on demonstrating the role of Design-Led Innovation (DLI) as an enabler for the success of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within high growth environments. This chapter is targeted toward businesses that may have been exposed to the concept of design previously at a product level and now seek to better understand its value through implementation at a strategic level offering. The decision to engage in the DLI process is made by firms who want to remain competitive as they struggle to compete in high cost environments, such as the state of the Australian economy at present. The results presented in this chapter outline the challenges in the adoption of the DLI process and the implications it can have. An understanding of the value of DLI in practice—as an enabler of business transformation in Australia—is of benefit to government and the broader design community.

A platform - independent product library for BIM

There is considerable interest internationally in developing product libraries to support the use of BIM. Product library initiatives are driven by national bodies, manufacturers and private companies who see their potential. A major issue with the production and distribution of product information for BIM is that separate library objects need to be produced for all of the different software systems that are going to use the library. This increases the cost of populating product libraries and also increases the difficulty in maintaining consistency between the representations for the different software over time. This paper describes a project which uses “software transformation” technology from the field of software engineering to support the definition of a single generic representation of a product which can then be automatically converted to the format required by receiving software. The paper covers the current state of implementation of the product library, the technology underlying the transformations for the currently supported software and the business model for creating a national library in Australia. This is placed within the context of other current product library systems to highlight the differences. The responsibilities of the various actors involved in supporting the product library are also discussed.

A design approach to the study of people's experiences with technologies in the context of public transport

Relevant to the study of people’s attitudes towards public transport use is the consideration to the role of technology as part of the travel experience. Technologies aim to enhance daily tasks but tend to change the way people interact with products and can be perceived as difficult to use. This is critical in the context of “public use” where products and services are to be used by the population at large: adults, children, elderly, people with disabilities, and tourists. From different perspectives, the topic of users and the use of technologies have been studied in the social sciences and human computer interaction fields; however, earlier approaches fail to address the ways in which experiential knowledge informs people’s interactions with products and technologies, and how such information could guide the design of future technologies. This paper describes a pilot study, part of a larger ongoing exploratory research that investigates people’s experiences with infrastructure, systems, and technologies in the context of public transport. The methodological approach included focus groups, field observations, and retrospective verbal reports. At this stage, the study found that four context led factors were the primary source of reference informing participants’ actions and interactions; they are: (i) context >> experience, (ii) context >> interface, (iii) context >> knowledge, (iv) context >> emotion.

Emerging Opportunities for "Design Thinking" to Deliver Sustainable Solutions in the Built Environment

In the built environment sector, a range of innovations are delivering environmental improvements with mixed success worldwide. The authors of this paper argue that a more “disruptive” form of innovation is needed to bring about significant and systemic change within the sector. Critical to this transition is the development of new behaviours and values. In particular, built environment professionals need to become active change agents in cultivating these new behaviours and values through the development of collaborative visions, scenarios, practices, and ideas. This paper identifies and discusses the critical role that design (in its broadest sense) can play in this process. Drawing on a comprehensive review of literature, the authors highlight a number of transformational opportunities for cross professional learning and sharing between design and built environment disciplines in achieving environmental innovation (eco-innovation). The paper also considers several design-based concepts that have a potential application in the built environment sector including: design thinking, social innovation (human-centered), and disruptive innovation (transformational) approaches. The research findings will assist in building the capabilities of designers and innovators to create sustainable solutions to global problems, and in supporting the social diffusion of systems-changing ideas in the built environment sector.

From styling to strategy : transforming an Australian manufacturing SME's perception of design

This thesis explores the shift in perception of design from a styling and product-focused tool, towards a holistic strategic approach within a small to medium sized manufacturing company. This research is significant because it demonstrates how design tools and approaches can be used within business to translate theory into operational, strategic and cultural outcomes. The outcomes of this research will encourage other businesses to take on similar design-led projects with the ultimate goal of employing design as a means to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Developing a transdisciplinary approach to improve urban traffic congestion based on Product Ecosystem theory

Product Ecosystem theory is an emerging theory that shows that disruptive “game changing” innovation is only possible when the entire ecosystem is considered. When environmental variables change faster than products or services can adapt, disruptive innovation is required to keep pace. This has many parallels with natural ecosystems where species that cannot keep up with changes to the environment will struggle or become extinct. In this case the environment is the city, the environmental pressures are pollution and congestion, the product is the car and the product ecosystem is comprised of roads, bridges, traffic lights, legislation, refuelling facilities etc. Each one of these components is the responsibility of a different organisation and so any change that affects the whole ecosystem requires a transdisciplinary approach. As a simple example, cars that communicate wirelessly with traffic lights are only of value if wireless-enabled traffic lights exist and vice versa. Cars that drive themselves are technically possible but legislation in most places doesn’t allow their use. According to innovation theory, incremental innovation tends to chase ever diminishing returns and becomes increasingly unable to tackle the “big issues.” Eventually “game changing” disruptive innovation comes along and solves the “big issues” and/or provides new opportunities. Seen through this lens, the environmental pressures of urban traffic congestion and pollution are the “big issues.” It can be argued that the design of cars and the other components of the product ecosystem follow an incremental innovation approach. That is why the “big issues” remain unresolved. This paper explores the problems of pollution and congestion in urban environments from a Product Ecosystem perspective. From this a strategy will be proposed for a transdisciplinary approach to develop and implement solutions.

Whole-of-Curriculum Design in Law

In this book teaching professionalism is characterised by the scholarly underpinning of each contribution; and every contribution provides a rich resource for enhancing teaching practice. The critical concerns for legal education have been identified and discussed: curriculum design that includes graduate attributes; embedding specific attributes across the curriculum; empowering students to learn; academic teamwork to manage large student cohorts; first year and final year transition strategies; tracking students' personal development through the use of ePortfolio; assessment strategies; improving student well-being and promoting resilience; teaching practice to achieve deep learning; flexibility in delivery; the use of Web 2.0 technology; and understanding the 21st century student.