David Harrison

• BSc, PhD
• Managing Director at Brunel University London

This insight report collates the evidence and insights gained throughout the duration of the NICER Programme on the role of human behaviour in the transition to a circular economy. By synthesising onthe-ground insights and experiences from researchers across NICER with academic literature, we present a view of the challenges and opportunities in im...

It has been acknowledged that global challenges are in the way of delivering responsible innovation, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals – a set of strategic objectives formulated by the United Nations General Assembly, to promote environmentally, societally, and economically-sustainable development. Design higher education has an imp...

Virtual Production is a new process in the audiovisual industry, taking advantage of emerging technologies and attracting a significant degree of interest in academic and industrial research. This article documents a research process focusing on co-design of innovative solutions for Virtual Production relying on immersive technologies. Two remote c...

The UK government's target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 has created an urgent need for decarbonization and the transition towards a circular metal economy (CME). The production of steel and aluminium, critical components of modern industry, contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and are the focus of this paper. This paper e...

The rapid depletion of finite resources used to create short-life products and resource sustainability issues has generated profound global concern. Design in the existing linear economy (LE) has been identified as a major contributor to these problems as well as a crucial component in the transition from the LE to a circular economy (CE). Due to t...

Combining design fiction with participatory design principles improves the roles of participants, from research subjects to research partners in terms of performance and output. By supporting the process with futuristic and strategic thinking tools, participants can become not only knowledgeable but experts in their own experiences. This research p...

In common with many industries, the audiovisual sector is likely to be transformed by real-time graphic engines in combination with immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. This technological mix enables what is presently known as Virtual Production, introducing a new process to the audiovisual professional, capable of...

Plastic in the linear consumption model is frequently manufactured and disposed of, leading to the creation of excessive plastic waste, which has significant consequences for the environment. Single-use food packaging waste is a large constituent of plastic waste that needs to be addressed urgently. The implementation of reusable packaging systems...

Using new and emerging technologies in education can increase student engagement and support teaching methods. However, using any technological tool requires prior knowledge and understanding, especially in education. An online survey was used to gather data on product design students' knowledge of Virtual Reality (VR) technology. As a case study,...

Kicking is the fundamental skill in Football. 2 most common shots are Laces (In step) and Inside (Side foot). Key biomechanical features are Hip flexion, Knee extension, Backswing, Force on landing foot, Ball Contact and Follow through. In this experiment, a simple kick study with University football team regarding their technique upon Ball Contact...

Environmental sustainability is under the threat of excessive single‐use plastic packaging waste, which current waste management fails to address. Therefore, the issue has led to an identification of the solution that can curb packaging waste without sacrificing social needs. Reusable packaging systems (RPSs) represent a circular approach to close...

Product-Service Systems (PSS), if properly designed and implemented, represent a promising approach to sustainability. However, there is a number of organisational, cultural and regulatory barriers that hinder the widespread PSS implementation. In this paper, the authors investigated Distributed Manufacturing (DM) as a promising production model wh...

A flexible coaxial fibre supercapacitor based on ball-milled activated carbon nanoparticles mixed with pen ink as electrode materials was successfully fabricated. With the ball-milling time prolonging, the size distribution of the activated carbon particles became gradually narrowed and the average particle size decreased into tens of nanometres fr...

Patent infringement detection usually implies research among documents in different forms, in both natural and unstructured language, often involving a lot of human resources and time. In order to ease this patent check process, we previously presented a visual tool to be used by designers themselves at any stage of the design process, providing th...

This review paper discusses the trends and projections for wearable technology in the consumer sports sector (excluding professional sport). Analyzing the role of wearable technology for different users and why there is such a need for these devices in everyday lives. It shows how different sensors are influential in delivering a variety of reading...

Rail traffic in passenger miles [in the UK] is projected to increase by 100% over the next 30 years, which presents a considerable challenge for the current infrastructure to perform the regular fluid servicing tasks. Developing robotic autonomous systems for train fluid servicing is a prospect for which no solutions currently exist. Therefore, the...

The increasing complexity of patented mechanical designs means that their novelty and inventive steps increasingly rely on interacting geometric features and how they contribute to device functions. These features and interactions are normally incorporated in patents through clear patent claims. However, patents can be difficult to interpret and un...

The article A Study of Metal Free Supercapacitors Using 3D Printing, written by Anan Tanwilaisiri, Yanmeng Xu, David Harrison, John Fyson, and Milad Arier, was mistakenly originally published without open access. After publication in volume 19, issue 7, page 1071–1079 this was corrected and the article was made an open access publication. Therefore...

Metal-free supercapacitors were designed and fabricated using a 3D printing process. An attempt was made to use carbon conductive paint to create both current collector and electrode. Two 3D printing techniques were combined and used to manufacture the electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs). The electrode material made from carbon conductive pain...

In some mechanical engineering devices the novelty or inventive step of a patented design relies heavily upon how geometric features contribute to device functions. Communicating the functional interactions between geometric features in existing patented designs may increase a designer’s awareness of the prior art and thereby avoid conflict with th...

Development in multi-material freeform 3D fabrication processes can provide the possibility of building complete functional electronic devices. This paper describes a design and manufacturing process for electrochemical supercapacitors. A combination of two 3D printing systems, i.e. a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printer and a paste extruder, w...

One of the main time and money consuming tasks in the design of industrial devices and parts is the checking of possible patent infringements. Indeed, the great number of documents to be mined and the wide variety of technical language used to describe inventions are reasons why considerable amounts of time may be needed. On the other hand, the ear...

The rapid development of flexible energy storage devices is crucial for various electronics industries. Highly flexible electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLCs) can be manufactured by 3D printing technology. It was a great challenge to fabricate multiple material layers of the EDLC in one rapid and accurate deposition event. The fabricated s...

The rapid development of flexible energy storage devices is crucial for various applications. However, it is still difficult to manufacture functional flexible electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLCs) in one single process due to many different types of materials being used in EDLCs. This paper presents a novel method of manufacturing highly...

This study presents a novel process and manufacturing system for the fabrication of Electric Double-Layer Capacitors (EDLCs) as energy storage devices. It shows an approach for printing multilayer EDLC components using 3D printing technology. This process allows layers of activated carbon (AC) slurry, gel electrolyte, and composite solid filaments...

Nowadays companies strive to stay competitive in the market by introducing innovative products and protecting their Intellectual Property by filing patents. However, with an increasing number of patents granted each year, designers face challenges in producing novel designs and patentable inventions such that early identification of potential paten...

Eco-labelling is the practice of eco information provision that most directly addresses consumer behaviour. Nowadays, consumers are facing difficulties in perceiving and understanding existing eco labels. In previous work, we proposed the conceptual framework of eco information individualisation which tailors eco labels according to the specific ne...

Despite the potential of Product-Service Systems (PSS) to provide societal and economic well-being and environmental sustainability, they have not been widely implemented. The adoption of sustainable PSS is restricted by a number of implementation barriers linked to organisational, cultural and regulatory challenges. There are some initial yet stil...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend existing knowledge of 4D printing, in line with Khoo et al. (2015) who defined the production of 4D printing using a single material, and 4D printing of multiple materials. It is proposed that 4D printing can be achieved through the use of functionally graded materials (FGMs) that involve gradational...

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the potential for printing selected commercially available activated carbon (AC) onto a flexible fabric. A dual nozzle deposition system was used based on fused deposition modelling (FDM) solid-based process. This is capable of extruding an AC slurry for making Electric Double-Layer Capacitors (ED...

About 1.4 billion people living at the Bottom of the Pyramid currently lack modern energy services and Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) appears as a promising approach to provide small-scale and locally produced clean electricity in rural areas and urban slums. In these contexts, Product-Service Systems (PSS) are considered suitable types of busi...

Energy access in Bottom of the Pyramid contexts represents a serious hindrance to sustainable development for about 1.4 billion people living without modern energy services. Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) systems are considered a feasible approach to provide locally-produced, reliable and sustainable energy in rural areas and informal settlemen...

Purpose The resistivity of cured conductive ink films are dependent on a wide range of process parameters. An early indication of the resistivity that is likely to result following curing can enable these parameters to be optimised and, therefore, improve product quality. This paper aims to report on the use of alternating current (AC) impedance me...

About 1.4 billion people from the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) currently lack sustainable energy services. In these contexts, SMEs and practitioners need to combine feasible technical solutions and appropriate business models. Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) systems emerge as possible solution to provide small-scale and locally based electricity....

Access to modern energy services represents a great challenge for about 1.4 billion people living in low and middle-income contexts. This paper discusses the combination of Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) with Product-Service Systems (PSS) business models, an approach that is considered promising to deliver sustainable energy solutions in these...

3D printing has been widely applied in the development of prototypes. The main advantage of this process is that the objects or products can be viewed in three dimensions on a computer display and a 3D sample can be created before committing to a large production run. There are various 3D printing technologies that are capable of manufacturing meta...

Purpose – Wearable electronic devices have emerged which require compact, flexible power storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Recently, energy storage devices have been developed based on supercapacitor threads. However, current supercapacitor energy storage threads which use electrolytes based on aqueous gels have a 1 V potential...

Eco labeling is one of the most important measures to encourage sustainable consumer behavior. However problems are identified in the consumer's ability to perceive and understand eco labels. The concept of information individualization was suggested to engage consumers by tailoring eco information that appeals to their preferences. In this paper w...

Fibre supercapacitors were designed and manufactured using a dip-coating method. Their electrochemical properties were characterized using a VersaSTAT 3 workstation. Chinese ink with a fine dispersion of carbon and binder was coated as the electrode material. The specific capacitance per unit length of a copper fibre supercapacitor with the length...

There is an opportunity to improve the efficiency of passive Trombe walls and active solar air collectors by replacing their conventional glass covers with lightweight polycarbonate panels filled with nanoporous aerogel insulation. This study investigates the thermal performance, energy savings, and financial payback period of passive Aerogel Tromb...

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the defects detecting technique in printed electronics by the third harmonic measurements. Various types of defects were introduced on the samples and the third harmonic signal was measured using a component linearity tester (Radiometer CLT1). The relationship between the defects in the printed s...

What is the potential of consumer behaviour change if appropriate eco information is provided at the point of purchase? What are the opportunities brought by the latest technologies to information design? What is the role of designer in this context? This paper investigates these questions through a review of literature surrounding the areas of eco...

1. Modeling Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function of One-dimensional Random Rough Surfaces with the Finite Difference Time Domain Method, PP. 101-106 2.Fabrication and Characterisation of Flexible Coaxial Thin Thread Supercapacitors, PP. 107-115 3. Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer with Thermal Radiation in an Enclosure in Case of...

This paper presents a novel method of patent mapping for visualising conflicts between patent claims that incorporates the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). The method uses TRIZ engineering parameters as the criteria for evaluating dissimilarities between patent claims, producing a visualisation based on Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) th...

Flexible coaxial thin thread supercapacitors were fabricated semi-automatically using a dip coating method. A typical coaxial thin thread supercapacitor of a length of 70 cm demonstrated a specific length capacitance of 0.3 mF cm−1 (11.2 mF cm−2 and 2.18 F cm−3) at 5 mV s−1, the device exhibited good electrochemical performance with a high volume e...

Domestic buildings are currently responsible for nearly one-third of UK CO2 emissions and the majority of these emissions are due to the large heat energy consumption of UK homes. Building occupants heavily influence this consumption by interacting with domestic heating controls. The poor usability of these controls has been widely documented and s...

The usual aim is to design systems that influence users' actions to reduce environmental impact, for example, reducing carbon dioxide emissions through energy use and transport choices. This can be about influencing people to adopt new systems, or helping people to use existing ones more efficiently, individually or in groups, using a variety of de...

[Please email me - dan@danlockton.co.uk - for a PDF, until the open access embargo has expired] Products and services explicitly intended to influence users' behaviour are increasingly being proposed to reduce environmental impact and for other areas of social benefit. Designing such interventions often involves adopting and adapting principles f...

This paper reports on CarbonCulture at DECC, an employee engagement platform for sustainable behaviour, which took place at the Department of Energy & Climate Change in London. Through a participatory design process, we developed simple web apps enabling staff to log actions around late working, food choices and commuting, and see colleagues' actio...

The compostability of degradable polyethylene under open windrow composting conditions is explored within this paper. Areas for consideration were the use of, and impacts of, degradable polyethylene sacks on the composting process and the quality of the finished compost product. These factors were investigated through tracking the polyethylene's we...

The ageing population of the UK is providing a large market opportunity for inclusive products and services. Yet older people are often excluded from using new technology due to inadequate consideration of their needs during the design process. This study focused specifically on including older people (aged 50-80) in the testing of a novel heating...

An energy storage device - a coaxial single fibre supercapacitor - was developed using a dip coating method and characterised using electrochemical methods. The specific capacitance per unit area and length were calculated to be 3.18 mF cm(-2) and 0.1 mF cm(-1), respectively, for a 2.6 cm supercapacitor. A 70 cm long fibre supercapacitor was then w...

Design for behaviour change aims to influence user behaviour, through design, for social or environmental benefit. Understanding and modelling human behaviour has thus come within the scope of designers’ work, as in interaction design, service design and user experience design more generally. Diverse approaches to how to model users when seeking to...

Flexible strip supercapacitors are developed and their electrochemical properties are characterized. Activated carbon is used as the electrode material and it is found to have a good porous structure which provides a large surface area for energy storage. Furthermore, this activated carbon performs well. The manufacturing processes for the supercap...

This paper reviews the thermal performance of the existing UK housing stock, the main fabric efficiency incentive schemes and the barriers to obtaining deep energy and CO2 savings throughout the stock. The UK faces a major challenge to improve the thermal performance of its existing housing stock. Millions of dwellings possess ‘hard-to-treat’ solid...

There is an opportunity to improve the efficiency of flat plate solar air collectors by replacing their conventional glass covers with lightweight polycarbonate panels filled with high performance aerogel insulation. The in situ performance of a 5.4 m2 solar air collector containing granular aerogel is simulated and tested. The collector is incorpo...

Surface coatings that can help deter and solve gun crime are described. These nanoengineered coatings have been applied and evaluated on brass cartridge cases, where they increase associative forensic evidence through nanotag donation to the handler and the retention of handler's DNA. In future we expect this approach to be used for other surfaces...

With nearly 60% of domestic energy consumption relating to space heating, the interaction between users and their heating controls is crucial in reducing consumption. Yet, many heating controls are complex and exclude people due to the demands placed upon their capabilities in terms of vision, reach, dexterity and thinking. This study explores the...

Influencing more environmentally friendly and sustainable behaviour is a current focus of many projects, ranging from government social marketing campaigns, education and tax structures to designers' work on interactive products, services and environments. There is a wide variety of techniques and methods used, intended to work via different sets o...

CO 2 emissions from non-domestic buildings -primarily workplaces -make up 18 percent of the UK's carbon footprint. A combination of technology advances and behavioural changes have the potential to make significant impact, but interventions have often been planned in ways which do not take into account the needs, levels of understanding and everyda...

Cost-effective materials, products and installation methods are required to improve the energy efficiency of the UK's existing building stock. The aim of this paper is to assess the potential for high-performance translucent granular aerogel insulation to be retrofitted over single glazing to reduce heat loss without blocking out all of the useful...

The way we live greatly effects the carbon emissions of our homes; heating accounts for nearly 60% of domestic energy consumption in the UK. This consumption is directly influenced by occupants through the use of their control systems. Using real-world data from buildings and observational data from users this research proposes guidelines for the d...

Space heating accounts for almost 60% of the energy delivered to housing which in turn accounts for nearly 27% of the total UK's carbon emissions. This study was conducted to investigate the influence of heating control design on the degree of ‘user exclusion’. This was calculated using the Design Exclusion Calculator, developed by the Engineering...

When developing sustainable building fabric technologies, it is essential that the energy use and CO2 burden arising from manufacture does not outweigh the respective in-use savings. This study investigates this paradigm by carrying out a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) of silica aerogel. This unique, nanoporous translucent insulation mater...

Influencing more environmentally friendly and sustainable behaviour is a current focus of many projects, ranging from government social marketing campaigns, education and tax structures to designers’ work on interactive products, services and environments. There is a wide variety of techniques and methods used—we have identified over 100 design pat...

In 2006, the British Standards Institute (BSI) published BS 8887-1 ‘Design for Manufacture, Assembly, Disassembly and End-of-life processing’ (MADE) subtitled ‘General Concepts, Processes and Requirements’. This was the first British Standard to address design for efficient post-consumer product reprocessing. By designing and planning for remanufac...

US and Australian work has shown that the effectiveness of extracting deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from standard gun cartridges is low and so analysis costs are high ( www.cci.gov/Reference/LpDNACtg_files ). The presence of greater than 1 ng of trapped bio-material would increase the success rates of DNA profiling and facilitate cheaper DNA analysis...

The external temperature of the cartridge cases of 9 mm parabellum ammunition during the firing sequence was measured by a series of methods. Using a thermal imaging camera was the most successful method and showed that aluminium alloy cases reached higher temperatures than did brass cases. Peak temperatures for brass cases were 336 K at the case m...

Designing ‘persuasive’ products and services for social benefit often involves adopting and adapting principles and patterns from other disciplines and contexts where behaviour change is a goal. This poster briefly reports on a series of controlled trials of an idea generation toolkit which aims to make this transposition of patterns easier, with d...

Design for manufacture is well recognised by industry and is about optimising design to aid production. Today there is a significant and growing trend of recognising what happens to a product once its user phase has finished. Post-consumer processes are now an important consideration during the ab-initio stages of design. Rather than a focus limite...

The design of products, systems and environments can be used to influence user behaviour. This idea has significant potential for social benefit, particularly where human behaviour and product use decisions directly impact on the environment. Lessons learned and design techniques employed to influence behaviour in one field can often find additiona...

The Architectural Lens draws on techniques used to influence user behaviour in architecture, urban planning and related disciplines such as traffic management and crime prevention through environmental design (see also the Security Lens). While most of the techniques have been developed in the built environment, many of the ideas can also be applie...

This research aims to develop a design tool for product and service innovation which influences users towards more sustainable behaviour, reducing resource use and leading to a lower carbon footprint for everyday activities. The paper briefly explains the reasoning behind the tool and its structure, and presents an example application to water cons...

Using product and system design to influence user behaviour offers potential for improving performance and reducing user error, yet little guidance is available at the concept generation stage for design teams briefed with influencing user behaviour. This article presents the Design with Intent Method, an innovation tool for designers working in th...

Motivation – Choice architecture (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) is a phrase of the moment among politicians and economists seeking to influence public behaviour, but the relevance of the concept to designers has received little attention. This paper places choice architecture within the context of Design with Intent—design intended to influence user beh...

Persuasive Technology has the potential to influence user behavior for social benefit, e.g. to reduce environmental impact, but designers are lacking guidance choosing among design techniques for influencing interaction. The Design with Intent Method, a 'suggestion tool' addressing this problem, is introduced in this paper, and applied to the brief...

This paper reports progress in the development of strain sensors fabricated using the Conductive Lithographic Film (CLF) printing process. Strain sensitive structures printed via an unmodified offset lithographic printing press using a silver loaded conductive ink have been deposited concurrently with circuit interconnect, to form an electronic sma...

Purpose Microcontact printing is a process used to print high‐resolution protein arrays for biosensors. The paper aims to investigate using these techniques to print electrically conductive fine line structures for electroluminescent (E/L) light sources. Design/methodology/approach The viability of using microcontact printing as a process for elec...

Novel thermochromic graphic displays manufactured by printing thermochromic ink films in conjunction with conductive lithographic films (CLFs) are presented. Work in formulating lithographic printing inks is described. The properties of the deposited ink films and demonstration display structures employing these materials are discussed. These low-c...

Persuasive technology can be considered part of a wider field of ‘Design with Intent’ (DwI) – design intended to result in certain user behaviour. This paper gives a very brief review of approaches to DwI from different disciplines, and looks at how persuasive technology sits within this space.

This paper demonstrates the application of a design tool called BioTRIZ. Its developers claim that it can be used to access biological strategies for solving engineering problems. Our aim is to design a roof for hot climates that gets free cooling through radiant coupling with the sky. The insulation in a standard roof stops the sun and convection...

Recent Government announcements have implied that wind power will play a major part in providing energy for the UK (BBC 20075. BBC. 2007. Wind ‘could power all UK homes’ [online], British Broadcasting Corporation. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7135930.stm [Accessed 20 January 2008] View all references). However, there is mu...

User behaviour is a significant determinant of a product’s environmental impact; while engineering advances permit increased efficiency of product operation, the user’s decisions and habits ultimately have a major effect on the energy or other resources used by the product. There is thus a need to change users’ behaviour. A range of design techniqu...

This paper describes an investigation into the shape memory effects in engineering polymers, and their possible use in active fasteners. Characterisation of the shape memory effects in engineering polymers by tensile and bending shape recovery tests is described. A study of the long-term reliability of the shape memory effect in selected engineerin...