Development and Validation of Added Value Identification Method and Design Aid Tool to Support Industrial Designers in Producing an Am-Enabled Personalisable Product Designs

Knowledge management and decision aid tools play an essential role in product development, and the selection of the presentation format is crucial to enable industrial designers to fully exploit the capabilities of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. This paper presents the development and validation of the Value-added AM-enabled Personalised Product (V+APP) Design Method, which was achieved by exposing the design workbook to expert designers and asking them to evaluate its usability, applicability and effectiveness. The aim of the validation is to determine the validity of the proposed method from industrial designers' opinions about its impact on professional design practice. Focus groups were identified with strategic samples of professional designers to gather an in-depth understanding of the issues. Based on the results, the study revealed that knowledge management and decision aid tools that are adapted to the specificities of AM play an essential role in creating value-adding design features in personal sable AM products. It is vital for industrial designers to adopt AM knowledge in the early stage design process so that they are able to fully exploit the unique and value-adding design characteristics enabled by AM.