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E-fulfillment has a significant role to play within e-tailing, which provides products to a customer, comprising primarily of five components: website quality, customization strategy, distribution strategy, last mile delivery and return management. The purpose of this paper is to provide an e-fulfillment performance evaluation framework for an e-tailer, considering the different performance aspects of information systems (IS), marketing and operations for e-tailers.

Since quite a few performance aspects (i.e. IS, marketing system and operations) need to be factored in while evaluating the e-fulfillment performance, it may be considered as a complex multi-criteria decision-making problem. This study used decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) based analytic network process (DANP) to investigate the relationship between performance class and performance aspects, and calculated their weights. These designated weights of performance aspects help managers to find the important aspects needing improvement. The understanding of the interrelationship among the performance aspects enables managers to improve the efficiency of an e-tailing system.

This study provides the e-fulfillment performance evaluation framework to find the important aspects requiring improvement. The results of this study reveal that the important performance aspects of e-fulfillment performance are return policy, pickup method, innovativeness, assortment type, assortment width, trust (privacy and security) and promised delivery date.

This e-fulfillment performance evaluation could be used by an e-tailer to assess the e-fulfillment performance, and identify areas of improvement.

This study makes a contribution to the present body of knowledge by considering operations related performance aspects except the IS and marketing to evaluate the e-fulfillment performance.

In a construction project, “participants’ satisfaction” is one of the main dimensions used for measuring the successfulness of a project. Designers perform a major role in attaining the project goals and managing project complexity during production. The purpose of this paper is to examine the designers’ performance as evaluated by the main participants: the client, the project consultant/manager and the main contractor, and to identify the main success factors of designer performance using the participants’ evaluation. The study also aims to examine how the economic size of a project affects the project participants’ assessment of the designer’s performance. It is assumed that as the size of a project increases, so does the complexity of the project, which will affect the scope of work and demands on the designers’ operational performance for the specific project level.

The Finnish project evaluation and benchmark database was used in this study as empirical data. The quantitative data consists of surveys on the project level and are based on a multi-dimensional standard evaluation wherein the main participants evaluate each other’s performances. The client, project consultant and main contractor evaluated the designer’s performance. The data of the study consisted of a total of 892 evaluations. ANOVA analysis was used to examine the differences between the project participants’ assessments based upon the different economic sizes of the projects.

Contractors were satisfied with the designers’ performance in small projects, whereas the client and the project consultant/manager rated the designers’ performance most successful in large projects. This result may be due to small projects are typically simple and less complex, in which case design solutions are generally well-defined. Nonetheless, the participants’ level of satisfaction follows the same factors. The main problems in the designers’ performance were related to the design content: the flawlessness and comprehensiveness, as well as the compatibility and consistency of designs. These factors were emphasized particularly in the client’s low satisfaction of the designer’s performance. However, project participants were satisfied with the collaboration with designers; however, room for improvement could be found in internal communication and collaboration within the design teams. The findings illustrated that the assessment of the success rate of a project was party-specific, which was clearly affected by the size of the project, as large projects appeared to be more complex than smaller ones.

The findings suggested that there is a need to develop project-specific practices in managing multidisciplinary design teams. Additionally, particularly in large projects, designers should focus more on solving problems and design requirements occurring at the construction site. However, this should be implemented in such a way that this does not interfere with the design activities conducted with the client and project management. While client satisfaction is low in the small projects, designers should focus more on customer-oriented methods to serve client needs better.

In construction project management studies, there is a need to measure the importance that various participants assign to different success factors. Since project success factors depend on project type, a more project-specific approach is suggested to identify the main parameters for measuring project success. This study provides a holistic approach of the designers’ performance, which contributes to the theory of project success and designers’ performance improvement.

Several frameworks of retail store environment variables exist, but as shown by this paper, they are not particularly well-suited for supporting fashion store design processes. Thus, in order to provide an improved understanding of fashion store design, the purpose of this paper is to identify the most important store design variables, organise these variables into categories, understand the design constraints between categories, and determine the most influential stakeholders.

Based on a discussion of existing literature, the paper defines a framework of store design variables and constraints between these. The framework is investigated through six case studies of fashion store design projects.

Through a discussion of literature and empirical studies, the paper: identifies the most important store design variables, organises these variables into categories, provides an understanding of constraints between categories of variables, and identifies the most influential stakeholders. The paper demonstrates that the fashion store design task can be understood through a system perspective, implying that the store design task becomes a matter of defining a set of subsystems, while considering their mutual interdependencies.

The proposed framework may be used as a point of departure and a frame of reference for future research into fashion store design.

The paper may support retail designers and retail managers in fashion store design processes by clarifying which store design variables to consider and providing an understanding of the constraints between them.

The perspective on the fashion store design task offered by the proposed framework adds a layer of understanding to the way in which existing literature describes the challenges related to store design. The empirical studies of fashion store projects demonstrate that the described system perspective offers a useful way of organising fashion store designers’ experiences from design processes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the needs of digital library stakeholders and how a collaborative digital library might be designed to meet these needs. The collaborative digital library has been conceived to support secondary school students' information needs in conducting school‐based projects.

The paper uses the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture as the approach to investigate the user requirements and define the digital library organization, resources, processes, technology and information flows In applying the Zachman Framework and to holistically control the study, the case study approach and multiple data collection techniques were adopted.

Information obtained from these data gathering techniques helps to populate the requirements of the top three layers (18 cells) in the Zachman Framework to ascertain the design details of the digital library's scope, business and system model. The framework requires the abstraction of the characteristics and features of the digital library based on Zachman's six dimensions – motivation, data, people, process, place and time – as well as explains their structures and processes from the perspectives of the planner, owner and designer of the digital library.

The paper is of significance in the field of collaborative digital libraries, since the perspectives and dimensions established from the framework comprehensively capture the user needs and context of use, and help ensure that everything relevant to the digital library enterprise is covered.

This article aims to gain a better understanding of the reasons why serendipity is designed for in different kinds of environments. Understanding these design intents sheds light on the value such designs bring to designers, in contrast to the users of the environment. In this way, the article seeks to contribute to the literature on cultivating serendipity from a designers’ point of view.

An extensive review of the literature discussing designing for serendipity was conducted to elicit the different motivations to design for serendipity. Based on these findings and a thorough analysis, a typology of design intents for serendipity is presented.

The article puts forward four intents to design for serendipity: serendipity as an ideal, common good, mediator and feature. It also highlights that the current academic discourse puts a strong emphasis on two of them. It is argued that this academic abstraction could be problematic for how we deal with designs for serendipity, both in theory and practice.

The novelty of this article is that it addresses the question of why to design for serendipity from a designer’s point of view. By introducing the notion of directionality it opens up the opportunity to discuss serendipity from multiple perspectives, which contributes to gaining a firmer understanding of serendipity. It allows to more explicitly formulate the different functions of a design for serendipity and thereby expands our knowledge on the value of designing for serendipity. At the same time, it sheds light on the potential threats to designing for serendipity.

This paper aims to identify and compare the graphical shapes and meanings attributed to place/city by the designer/creative/author of a city visual identity (VI) and by the client and designer’s peers.

To identify and compare the graphical shapes and meanings attributed to place/city by the designer/creative/author of a city VI and by the client and designer’s peers.

This paper analysed the way the visual culture of different stakeholders influenced the process and the construction of the iconographic meanings. Secondly, this paper assessed how the design tools impacted the creative process in that specific context.

A demanding involvement of more participants in the design process can be worthy for a VI outcome. Visual identity of a city is both designer’s creative as a political process. The several aesthetical options decisions implied adaptation, trade-offs and negotiations.

This research explains how the design tools and forms were used in the creative process of designers when conceiving the VI of a place. This research also reveals how a design work can have an effective impact on the sensory qualities emanating from city brands which are recognized by tourists and citizens. The consideration of the designer’s tools makes a relevant contribution to understand some underlying procedural issues.

The main purpose of this research is to understand the priorities of designers for an ecodesign support, while developing environmentally sustainable products. Also, this study identifies the requirements of the designers for managing the environmental quality of products.

This research is conducted in two phases of survey. In the first phase, various requirements of designers are collected, refined and segregated under certain well defined characteristics of the ecodesign support. In second phase, the designers are asked to rank each characteristic of the ecodesign support in a questionnaire. The responses obtained from the designers are analyzed separately for engineering designers and design researchers by using Henry Garrett ranking technique to identify the priorities of designers for an ecodesign support.

Results show that there is a contrast between the perspective of engineering designers and design researchers, and their priorities for an ecodesign support are opposite to each other. Thus it can be understood that the features which are added by design researchers in ecodesign support may not be adequate for engineering designers to manage the environmental quality of products.

The designers play a key role in the development of environmentally benign products through the use of different ecodesign supports (i.e. tools or methods). Therefore, it is important to understand the desired characteristics of the ecodesign support from designer's perspective. Also, the priorities of designers from academia (design researchers) and industry (engineering designers) must be understood because they are the two stakeholders indulged in the development and usage of various ecodesign supports for environmentally conscious product development (ECPD).

Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are witnessing an accelerated transformation by the advent of Industry-4.0 (I4.0) in the post-pandemic period. It is offering promising customer responsiveness, competitiveness, business growth and sustainability and thereby, compelling its integration to MSMEs. Therefore, it is imperative for researchers to explore Industry 4.0 challenges and their specific implementation requirements and also provide useful insights to the stakeholders.

This research paper has identified, explained and analysed various determinants of the I4.0 implementation, in MSME context. Focus group approach has been applied for taking inputs from experts for developing the House of Quality (HOQ) tool of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology from the Total Quality Management (TQM) tool-box.

Based on the responses and after applying QFD, a conceptual model suggesting relevant strategies to execute I4.0 by Indian MSMEs has been developed. The model highlights three key challenges being faced by the Indian MSMEs –Top management support, Incompatible resources and Transition cost. The model also reveals vital few designer's descriptors – Cultural reorientation, IT enabled digitization, Process automation and knowledge and skill in I4.0 implementation (Knowhow) for a structured implementation of I4.0.

The evolved HOQ framework has provided some useful insights - priority areas in the MSME challenges and the designer's descriptors for I4.0 implementation in MSME. The research has also provided the understanding of the dynamics between the I4.0 components through the 10 × 10 interrelationship matrix of the HOQ. Farsighted MSME leaders, practising consultants, sourcing managers and policy makers can use the developed framework as a reference in formulating tactics to mitigate the I4.0 implementation barriers.

The non-conventional application of HOQ in the QFD approach from the TQM tool-box is a useful value addition to the TQM practitioners. The useful insights to the MSME leaders, policy makers, sourcing managers of OEM, consultants engaged in I4.0 transformation and academic researchers are the other contribution.

Examines the role of design within the context of shopping centre positioning by means of a case‐study approach, based upon the design and implementation of festive decorations for the award‐winning Prince’s Square shopping centre in Glasgow. Seeks to identify the role that design and the designer plays in the process of developing a positioning statement for a shopping centre. Examines in particular the design development process from the designer’s perspective, and provides an insight into how these professionals approach the problem of integrating design creativity within the physical constraints of a shopping centre, while at the same time seeking to satisfy the marketing aspirations of the retailers housed there.