Design and promise

Affordance-based Design: Status and Promise

Covenant, Promise, and the Gift of Time

If we categorize religions according to whether they give greater prominence to time or to space, the role of “promise” marks a religion of covenant as clearly a religion of time. Yet the future is unknowable and can only be present to us as a field of possibilities. How far do these possibilities extend? The question directs us back to the nature of time, a question that became concealed in th...

Cloud-Based Design and Manufacturing: Status and Promise

The information technology industry has benefited considerably from cloud computing, which allows organizations to shed some of their expensive information technology infrastructure and shifts computing costs to more manageable operational expenses. In light of these benefits, we propose a new paradigm for product design and manufacturing, referred to as cloud-based design and manufacturing (CB...

Product platform design and customization: Status and promise

In an effort to improve customization for today’s highly competitive global marketplace, many companies are utilizing product families and platform-based product development to increase variety, shorten lead times, and reduce costs. The key to a successful product family is the product platform from which it is derived either by adding, removing, or substituting one or more modules to the platf...

Design, challenge, and promise of stimuli-responsive nanoantibiotics

Over the past few years, there have been calls for novel antimicrobials to combat the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. While some promising new discoveries have met this call, it is not nearly enough. The major problem is that although these new promising antimicrobials serve as a short-term solution, they lack the potential to provide a long-term solution. The conventional method of creating n...