Research Recommendations (848)

Analyze and compare airline-design projects in the Portuguese autonomous regions, especially the Azorean carrier SATA, and in the other airlines that operated in mainland Portugal during the same period as TAP.

Audience:

Researchers, aviation historians, design historians

Domain:

Regional and Parallel Airline Histories

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study design for TAP's ground representations and delegations, both in Portugal and in the countries where the airline maintained a presence, in order to understand the terrestrial extension of its corporate image.

Audience:

Researchers, exhibition historians, branding scholars

Domain:

Ground Representation / Corporate Image

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Investigate exhibition stands and window-display design developed for TAP in order to understand how the airline communicated its identity in temporary and commercial environments.

Audience:

Researchers, exhibition designers, design historians

Domain:

Exhibition and Window Display Design

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study the design of ground-handling equipment, including stairs, baggage cars and ramps, containerization systems, and cargo-storage solutions, as part of the broader design ecosystem surrounding the airline.

Audience:

Researchers, industrial designers, aviation historians

Domain:

Ground Equipment / Transport Design

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study the uniforms of ground staff in order to establish comparative parallels with those of flight crews and better understand the full visual culture of the airline workforce.

Audience:

Researchers, fashion historians, design historians

Domain:

Uniform Design / Workforce Visual Culture

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

High

Compare the traditional media analyzed in the thesis—such as posters and newspaper advertisements—with the emergence of radio and television advertising in order to understand the evolution of TAP's communication ecosystem.

Audience:

Researchers, media historians, communication designers

Domain:

Media Evolution / Airline Communication

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Preserve, survey, and critically study material for new partial investigations that progressively extend the time frame from 1979 to 2005, when the airline's designation was again altered to the current TAP Portugal.

Audience:

Researchers, archivists, museums, heritage institutions

Domain:

Archival Preservation / Chronological Extension

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Further develop and test the reconfigurable production system for wood bending until full implementation is achieved, aiming at automated manufacturing of custom bentwood components.

Audience:

Researchers, furniture manufacturers, production engineers,...

Domain:

Production System Development / Automated Wood Bending

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Assess the shape-evaluation subsystem by comparing simulation results with experimental physical tests on constructed custom chairs, in order to fine-tune the simulation and optimisation properties.

Audience:

Researchers, engineers, designers

Domain:

Shape Evaluation Validation / Simulation vs Physical Testing

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Develop frontend applications for end users—such as configurators or innovation toolkits—that support different levels of control, interactivity, and openness during customisation procedures.

Audience:

Researchers, software developers, end users, designers

Domain:

Frontend Applications / End-User Customisation

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Use the grammar-based approach to develop new product types and new sets of functions, including the exploration of generic and specific grammars and the encoding of intrinsic and extrinsic product functions.

Audience:

Researchers, product designers, shape-grammar scholars

Domain:

Grammar-Based Product Development / New Functions

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Implement information to support all phases of the design process—conceptual, embodiment, detail design, production, manufacturing, and assembly—and formalise it as reusable libraries for future product development.

Audience:

Researchers, designers, engineers, software developers

Domain:

Integrated Design-Process Information / Reusable Libraries

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Develop custom-built integrative software capable of seamless integration and reuse of information produced by the different parts of the generative design system.

Audience:

Researchers, software developers, designers, engineers

Domain:

Integrative Software / Generative Design Systems

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Define multi-objective optimisation problems that combine different design goals—rather than only structural integrity—using weighted objective functions.

Audience:

Researchers, optimisation specialists, designers, engineers

Domain:

Multi-Objective Optimisation / Furniture Design

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study sustainable reconfigurable tooling systems capable of producing customised designs, with the broader aim of encouraging mass customisation as a new production standard.

Audience:

Researchers, manufacturers, sustainability scholars, product...

Domain:

Sustainable Reconfigurable Tooling / Production Standards

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Treat scenographic practice as a research laboratory for transforming inherited theatre forms - especially Italian-style venues - by testing new scene-spectator configurations in each production.

Audience:

Stage Designers, Theatre Architects, Directors

Domain:

Scenography / Theatre Architecture

Scope:

Micro → Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Design or retrofit theatres as socially open, technically maintainable places that integrate pre- and post-show experience and urban life, while matching polyvalent machinery to realistic operating capacity.

Audience:

Theatre Architects, Cultural Managers, Public Clients

Domain:

Theatre Design / Cultural Infrastructure

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Continue weakening the fourth wall and seeking permanent spectator involvement and complicity as a core criterion of future scenographic design.

Audience:

Stage Designers, Directors, Performance Researchers

Domain:

Audience Engagement / Performance Design

Scope:

Micro → Meso

Feasibility:

Medium-High

Develop and reuse transparent-overlay comparison diagrams and other micro-analytical tools to support future historical type analysis and make punchcutter decisions more explicit for other researchers and designers.

Audience:

Researchers, Type Designers, Historians

Domain:

Typography / Design History

Scope:

Micro → Meso

Feasibility:

High

Extend the Villeneuve revival beyond the current roman and italic titling cuts into a larger contemporary family that responds to current use cases while remaining grounded in the historical evidence already assembled.

Audience:

Type Designers, Publishers, Researchers

Domain:

Typeface Development

Scope:

Micro → Meso

Feasibility:

Medium

Add new weights and related display variants—especially expected contemporary options such as bold and light—to improve acceptance, versatility, and real-world use of the redesigned typeface.

Audience:

Type Designers, Publishers, Brand and Editorial Designers

Domain:

Typography / Font Engineering

Scope:

Micro

Feasibility:

Medium

Use the tools, methods, and reasoning developed in the thesis as a platform for further work on this typeface and for broader research in type design and type history, including additional historically grounded revivals.

Audience:

Researchers, Type Designers, Educators

Domain:

Type Design / Type History

Scope:

Meso → Macro

Feasibility:

High

Promote mobilizing and structuring public–private investment projects for the Portuguese automotive sector, with active participation of national supply chains and streamlined support from government entities, organizations, and sector associations.

Audience:

Policy makers, industry leaders, supply-chain actors, resear...

Domain:

Automotive Sector Strategy / Innovation Ecosystems

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Low-Medium

Extend the investigation beyond passenger cars to the remaining segments of the national automotive market, as framed in ACEA classifications, in order to broaden the model's field of application.

Audience:

Researchers, automotive designers, industry analysts

Domain:

Automotive Segmentation / Model Scope Extension

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Develop a more detailed viability study for application of the model in the sector, supported by management and marketing perspectives.

Audience:

Researchers, managers, marketers, automotive firms

Domain:

Viability Study / Management and Marketing

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium