Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 311

Abstract: An ‘industrial economy’ is based on cost, whereas a ‘service economy’ focuses on quality. The coming era of an ‘experience economy’ would allow customers to demand for more than the basic features of a product. One example of such special product feature is authenticity. For the past years, the Taiwanese government has actively promoted the policy of a creative and cultural industry. This directive has led to the production of a tremendous amount of culture-driven products. The eager demand for designs of culture-driven products poses a challenge to their quality, which leads to a discussion of their authenticity. This research generalized the importance of authenticity through a literature review, and utilized grounded theory to analyze the authenticity of culture-driven products. Through customer interviews, the concept of cultural authenticity factors is deconstructed. The results indicate that feelings of authenticity originate from the cultural message implied by the culture-driven product. Furthermore, cost and quality are determined as the main considerations for the rendering of cultural authenticity. Culture-driven products remain characterized by their basic features. Hence, customers cannot receive the cultural message if they are dissatisfied with the product cost and quality. Therefore, the research outcomes were used to develop a theoretical model for the design process of culture-driven products to assist designers in observing the needs of the target market, and to reconstruct the feelings of cultural authenticity by satisfying customer needs.

Abstract: Achieving a balance between visual aesthetics and usability to enhance user experience has enjoyed an increasing popularity in Web design. This study combines creative drawings as intuitive probes to investigate users’ emotional reactions and needs. The basic purpose of these creative exercises is to inspire design researchers and practitioners into applying a strategy in practicable design research to probe real user experiences and create an enjoyable and effective user environment. Emotional engagement with design is vital in design research. Unfortunately, laboratory usability tests often involve complex technical and mechanical tools that discourage user participation, thus limiting the opportunity to receive feedback. The research exercise in this study includes a series of intuitive practices that engaged the participants as target users to sketch an imagined garden layout, a library landscape layout, and a personal home page. We hypothesized from their drawings that a connection exists among the users’ sketches, Web interface preferences, and a classification of personality types. Significant results were obtained: (1) Creative drawing is an effective tool in understanding the personality of a user; (2) Three graphic practices establish emotional connections with the users’ Web interface preferences and product design; and (3) User personality categorization reveals preferences in Web interface and product design. This study focused on the effect of visual aesthetics and user-friendly methods on usability assessments in response to the increasing emotional conciliation of human-computer interaction design. These findings are beneficial in keeping abreast with the developments in design creativity and the qualitative contributions of design inspiration.

Abstract: While facing an increasingly borderless competitive global economic environment, the development of culture-driven products industries has become the dominant issues of the local economic policy. Attracting tourism by pushing the interest of people to the local culture, particularly through consuming experiences of culture-driven products, is a current trend in urban competitiveness. Cultural products are popular instruments representing local culture. They translate messages, narrate memories and historical events, and establish an emotional connection with people. This study explores the possibility of using cultural products as a city marketing strategy for the former Tainan State Magistrate Residence, which can be integrated with other cultural zones to represent Tainan City. The Tainan City government registered it as a city-level historical heritage site and completed its restoration and reuse plan in 2000. However, no practical marketing strategy has been formulated to promote the site and to raise cultural awareness among both locals and tourists. The present study adopts an empirical case generated from an outing course: a one-day cultural learning tour involving 61 student participants in the former Tainan State Magistrate Residence. Many rich identifiable cultural features were derived from the experience of the participants, which were transformed into unique and irreplaceable cultural product ideations. The findings of the case study provide a clear understanding of the dynamic relationship among cultural products, city heritage, and city marketing, which strengthens the potential of cultural storytelling through the design of cultural products for city image promotion and urban regeneration. They provide practical designers, urban planners, and policy makers a view of the importance of cultural communication media through products.

Abstract: Fallow the nature makes it vernacular have always been the highest principles of vernacular architecture. This research uses Toraja traditional residence houses ( Tongkonan ) and the rice barn （alang-alang）in Tana Toraja of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Through this, we attempt to understand how vernacular architecture effectively controls the indoor environment in the high-temperature, high humidity environment to achieve comfortableness with local materials attained and construction methods. By using thermo recorder equipment to recording and measuring the microclimate record for the residence house and the rice barn. After investigation, comparison and analysis of temperature and relative humidity we discover that the interior environment is more comfortable for human residence in the Tongkonan; at the same time the rice barn is presented as the best storage space for their rice and crops. Both types of buildings create a most habitable environment for people and storage space for grains. It also proves that natural material is an efficient resource for local community as sustainable matter.

Abstract: The user-centred design approach to housing development requires definitive processes to predict homebuyers’ existing and future needs. The scenarios of use offered here establish parameters for design when the actual situation of future occupants is not known, thereby modelling the attitudes and responses of potential homebuyers throughout design and construction. To develop the highest level of customisation to meet homebuyers’ specific requirements and changing needs over time, the vertical and horizontal relationships between the different stages of housing development is especially considered. This paper advances scenarios for the ‘use’ and according reconfiguration of the base building for Taiwanese housing development to accommodate homebuyer’s individual and changing circumstances, needs and preferences over times. Following the concepts of ‘support’ and ‘in-fill’, each interior configuration is presented at two stages — service stage and interior fit-out stage — during which detachable interior modules are organized to create rooms, storage, partitions, cabinets, and water supply and drainage facilities, electrical wiring, communication lines and gas piping is distributed from the service docks to the structural envelope of the building shell. The representation of the dwelling at the interior fit-out stage indicates the lifestyle and life stage of residents and the flexibility of interior design that can be achieved through the base building system. The transition from one scenario of use to another demonstrate that all interior walls are reconfigurable, highlighting the ability of the home to be altered over time.

Abstract: This paper proposes a human-centered design approach to provide a model of flexible design process for private housing development in Taiwan. By integrating concepts of “Open Building” and “Open Source Building”, this paper suggests the scope for the ongoing customization of individual units within housing developments that intends to facilitate real-world, sustainable development for the Taiwanese housing market. Also, it argues that the current market-led design approach creates inherent problems for the Taiwanese housing developments. However, in Taiwan’s housing sectors are coupled with entrenched, unsustainable decision-making from housing developers and particularly the intractable communication gap between developers, architects and homebuyers. The current circumstance is that architects often lack professional integrity and serve the interests of developers before those of home occupants as well as the wider community. Noticeably, growing global awareness of sustainable development has recast housing as an intrinsic component of the urban environment and successful communities. In Taiwan, short-term profitability rather than long-term sustainability drives private housing. As a result, by employing a series of exploration to current design process and the principle of design management, this paper will 1) analyze the flawed relationships between Taiwanese developers, architects, interior designers and homebuyers, explaining how these lead to inferior housing design and the waste of significant human, material and financial resources; and 2) then concludes a model of flexible design process integrated the concepts of human-centered design approach, Open Building and customization of Taiwanese townhouse developments. Consequently, such approach can significantly improve the flexibility of the present design process in terms of better meeting end-user requirements, the demands of sustainability, whilst ensuring the continued commercial viability of housing developments.

Abstract: Under the harsh climate, environment protection and sustainable development have become a global issue. Deep impacts have been caused by over packaging. Taiwanese government has legislated for related issues. However, different understanding and cognition are aroused among industry and specific guidelines for lightweight packaging are needed, which also caused our interest to start this research. This research is based on the discussion of related Green Package documents to introduce Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to establish the development foundation of Green Package strategy. Meanwhile experts and related personnel of industrial circles have been interviewed to process reversed fuzzy logic grounded theory to analyze the main consider components of Green Package. Finally the outcome concepts and principles are introduced to Analytical Network Process (ANP) to generalize Green Package development strategy via quantification analysis and prioritization. We hope the Green Package Development Strategy could help industrial circles and also offer related reference in all respects.

Abstract: With the threat of global warming nowadays in the 21st century, the European Union has set the standard “Eco-Design Requirements for Energy-using Product(EuP)” for controlling the development of consumptive electronic machinery and products. Therefore, the trend of green design sees the instruction of EuP as the main direction for energy-saving. Considering the factors, undergoing the comprehensive evaluation and development process, the industry needs to draw up the corresponding design strategy in response to the new situation. Therefore, to optimize the green design strategy, the designers can replace hardware with the intelligent system to develop more optimal energy-saving products. Following the ecological instructions of energy-saving of EuP as direction, this study combined the advantage of the intelligent system and green design in order to optimize strategy of green design on intelligent energy-saving product under eco-design requirements for energy-using product (EuP). The evaluation factors were included in the strategies of intelligent energy-saving product design by analyzing the product users’ cognition, needs, habit and etc. Furthermore, through the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), the priority and the important factors of green design were analyzed. By examining the green design strategy on energy-using product, industry needs to think the energy-saving conditions and the key factors on deciding process. Eventually, the efficiency of product design for environment can be fulfilled successfully.

Abstract: At the present time the demand for energy, goods and materials is surging because of advanced technology and population growth. However, the resources on earth are limited. For this reason, the issues concerning using the resources effectively and changing them into energy are important. Taiwan creates a vast amount of agricultural waste every year. Traditionally, the agricultural waste would be burned and buried. It is not only the fact that we can’t reuse and recycle the agricultural waste, but also the problem of air pollution when they were burned. Therefore, it is necessary to create a solution that can recycle and reuse the agricultural waste, and change them into energy. The agricultural waste is full of wood fiber, and it can be reduced by a microorganism method. This study will use a common agricultural waste which is cane because it is one of the main agricultural products in Taiwan. The wood fiber in cane will be added to the thermostable cellulolytic bacterial Geobacillus thermoleovorans T4 which is found from in sugar refinery wastewater found often in Southern Taiwan. The results showed that T4 can increase the rate of reducing sugar. The reduced sugar can then translate into energy. This method can help to recycle and reuse agricultural waste, and it will decrease environmental pollution.

Abstract: This experiment involves the growth of ZnO nanorods with NaOH by the HMT-assisted hydrothermal method and discusses the efficiency of NaOH is helpful to the growth of ZnO nanorods. The analyses of the synthesized ZnO nanorods by XRD, SEM, EDS and TEM reveal a single crystal structure with good crystallinity where the nanorod growth is along the [001] direction. In addition, it is discovered experimentally that the aspect ratio of the product is increased with the addition of NaOH, which verifies that the basic environment is beneficial to the growth of ZnO nanorods.