Although Chinese designers are gaining international recognition, design research (the study of design and designing) is still informed by a predominantly Western perspective. In this paper, we explore how taking into consideration the Chinese perspective can advance design research, by challenging and expanding prevailing understandings of design and designing. We first uncover the Chinese perspective, by tracing the emergence of modern design in China, discussing the meaning of the Chinese word for design, she ji (sic), and elaborating some important aspects of the Chinese traditional culture (harmony, holism, and change) that influence Chinese design practices. We then argue how this Chinese perspective can foster connections between diverse paradigms of design research, counter the tendency toward reductionism in design research, and encourage experimentation in design research methods. This paper contributes to advance design research through inclusion of the Chinese perspective. By so doing, it also sustains the agenda of decolonizing design research.

Many universities offer courses in which students from various disciplines form teams to work on complex design challenges. Despite the importance of such teams for engineering design education, very little is known about them. This study explores the impact of graduate student goal orientations (mastery, performance-proof, and performance-avoidance) on course performance (team performance and peer assessment) via functional team member selection. The study examined 122 teams and found that students with performance-proof and performance-avoidance orientations are more likely to form functionally homogenous teams. However, there is no significant relationship between a mastery goal orientation and functional team diversity. Furthermore, the results indicate that functional team diversity is a double-edged sword for course performance, insofar as it has a positive impact on team performance, but also a negative effect on peer assessment. In addition, both performance goal orientations (performance-proof and performance-avoidance) have a negative effect via functional diversity on team performance and a positive effect on peer assessment. The findings advance our understanding of team member selection by graduate students and the effect thereof on course performance. Hence they may assist in developing future tools and processes to enhance learning by engineering design students in interdisciplinary design projects.

Analogies have been shown to play a key role in design collaboration. However, research has been largely limited to the analogy itself and how it is used, overlooking the impact of analogy from the recipients' perspective. This is a critical aspect, considering the imperfect information transfer between members in design teams. We address this gap by developing a measure of perceived analogical communication in teams, focusing on the interpretation of the use of analogy in internal design team communications. We test the resulting scale across 3 samples, totalling 252 multi-disciplinary teams with 1182 team members. Results show that the scale is an internally consistent, distinct construct, and holds predictive validity for relevant design team processes and outcomes. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

While ideation is accepted as integral to the design process, the methods for facilitating ideation within teams are not as well understood. We propose and test the usefulness of sequencing variations in task type and content to facilitate team ideation in a team creativity task. In a repeated measures design we assessed team ideation (96 teams) before and after exposure to one of three randomized variations in sequences of task type and content. After this intervention, teams exposed to tasks that were dissimilar in content or type experienced the highest increase in variety of ideas produced. Our results are relevant for practice as they suggest that structuring team tasks to alternate content may help to improve team creativity.

Universities increasingly incorporate multidisciplinary design projects into their curriculum to better prepare their students for the labor market. In these projects, student team members of various disciplinary backgrounds develop new product or service concepts for organizational partners. This structure enables students to learn not only from the interaction with the content and lecturer, but also from communication with other team members. Little is known, however, about the relative effectiveness of specific communication modes on improving student learning outcomes in these interactions. This study examines the effect of three important communication modes—metaphors, visualizations, and narratives—on reported learning from other members. A total of 64 students working on two large multidisciplinary design student teams participated in this study. Survey results indicate that perceived learning increases through awareness and use of metaphorical communication, beyond previously supported effects for narratives and visualization. We conclude with implications for the way information is represented and structured within multidisciplinary design student teams, and future research directions.

Purpose This study reviews the construct of analogy as an individual communication mode, examining its relationship with cross-understanding in knowledge-diverse teams. The authors theorize that analogy use enhances team information processing beyond mere communication frequency through bridging knowledge differences across team members. The authors propose that analogies will have a direct relationship to knowledge application, and an indirect effect via cross-understanding. However, communication frequency will have only an indirect effect on knowledge application through cross-understanding. Design/methodology/approach The authors sampled a 49-member team with 14 subteams, yielding 146 usable dyadic relationships. Two mediation models were estimated while using linear mixed-effect models in SPSS. Findings The results confirm the importance of analogies and cross-understanding in teams, generally supporting the hypotheses. Mere communication frequency was not related to knowledge application, indicating that how you say it may be more important than how often a team member speaks. Research limitations/implications This research explored these constructs through a three-week project in a sample of graduate students working with a real-world client. Future research could explore the validity of this model in other organizational settings and test the analogy construct on the team level. Practical implications The effectiveness of team member communication should be measured not only as frequency but also in terms of analogies to transmit meaning. Originality/value This paper contributes to an understanding of teams as information processors by building empirical support for the utility of analogical communication in design teams, establishing the relationship of analogies to cross-understanding and knowledge application.

Purpose– The aim of the current paper is to explore the role of cross-understanding as a mediator between openness to cognitive experience and reflective communication cognitions on the one hand and team performance on the other hand using the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) model as a framework (Ilgenet al., 2005).Design/methodology/approach– The sample consisted of 156 participants organized in 37 student teams. Two mediation models were estimated while using a nonparametric resampling procedure of bootstrapping developed by Hayes (2012).Findings– Cross-understanding positively mediates the relation between openness to cognitive diversity and team performance and the relation between reflective communication cognition and team performance. Reflective communication cognition has a direct and negative relation to team performance. Additionally, the percentage of women within groups positively relates to group performance.Research limitations/implications– Future research could explore the validity of this model in other organizational settings and while using different indicators for team performance.Practical implications– Practitioners should encourage an open climate toward knowledge diversity and different perspectives within teams, as this might create the optimal conditions for cross-understanding to emerge. Team members should also be encouraged to learn not only about the knowledge of other team members but also about their beliefs, preferences and things they are sensitive to, as this awareness is beneficial for the overall team performance.Originality/value– This paper contributes to the team cognition literature by bringing empirical support for a relatively less investigated concept: cross-understanding. The paper establishes its relation to team performance and two of its potential antecedents – openness to cognitive diversity and reflective communication cognition.

More and more business schools incorporate design thinking in their curriculum. Design thinking processes and tools are often taught through an innovation project in which multidisciplinary student teams develop a new product or service concept. This structure should enable students not only to learn from the lectures, but also from the other team members. Yet, communication within a multidisciplinary team is difficult, which might affect learning. In fact, very little is known about what communication might improve perceived learning in such a team. I examine the relationship between analogy used in communication and its relationship to perceived learning within multidisciplinary student teams by analyzing 312 dyadic communication ties. Controlling for other communication modes, such as jargon, historical examples, debate, visualization, argumentation, and narrative, I found the hypothesis confirmed that the use of analogy in communication is positive related to perceived learning. In addition to analogy, only visualization and argumentation have a positive relationship to perceived learning.

In this paper, observations are presented from an educational program that has 15 years experience in teaching the multidisciplinary approach in design, business and engineering. We first discuss the concept of "functional wall" that is often formed between disciplinary experts. Next, the approach of problem-based learning is introduced as a solution to break such walls within multidisciplinary teams. To illustrate PBL in practice, we explore a multidisciplinary student project on package design. In the project a team of 4 students was assigned the task of studying communicative elements of packaging and providing new innovative package design solutions. The paper presents a successful approach to train and manage multidisciplinary teams, providing students with the ability to understand the approaches, special know-how, and terminology of other discplines: the ones with which an expert is supposed to work together in the future.

In this paper we review cross-functional team effectiveness in the management literature and build an initial research model to be tested on the next phase of our project. We examined management research and theory relevant to cross-functional teams’ effectiveness and discovered that the existing frameworks to study this phenomenon are too general. Consequently our understandings of cross-functional team processes are incomplete and the research outcomes are inconsistent. To develop a better understanding of cross-functional teams, we updated the framework by introducing the concept of the functional wall. The functional wall surrounds team members and hinders cross-functional teamwork. Through communication and reciprocal understanding team members can overcome the functional wall and improve a teams’ outcome.

While the design profession has long been calling for wider diffusion into the business enterprise context of methodologies, tools and approaches, applied in design activity, it is only in the last decade that firms and organizations have started to regard “designerly” ways of doing things as a real option for enhancing their products, services and customer interaction. However, while “design thinking” has become a fashionable catchword, it is not so clear what are the underlying assumptions that underpin the concept and how these assumptions affect the process of learning design thinking. In this paper, through a process of deconstruction, the key elements of “Practices”, “Cognitive Approaches” and “Mindset” are reviewed and their relationships charted, with the aim of providing a basic conceptual approach for learning design thinking in higher education. The paper reviews three cases studies in master’s degree level education within the International Design Business Management program of the Aalto University, suggesting that educating future design professionals in collaborative work through extensive real-life business projects creates abilities that are needed in design thinking. Multidisciplinarity and abductive reasoning, together with problem- and practice-based learning approaches, facilitated by interdisciplinary faculty, are the elements that underpin educating the future design thinkers, vitally needed in the innovation economy.

Creative industries are seen as the wealth creating engines in the post-industrial economies. There is a tendency to organize work in these industries into temporary organizations, projects; these initiatives cut across industries and network small and large actors and appear to be well suited to rapidly moving, fluid industries and business environments, both in developed and developing economies. That being said, projects seem to fail all too often and not achieve prescribed goals. Project scopes and budgets drift and timeframes are not met; in other cases projects fail due to rapidly changing circumstances making original aims redundant. In this paper we explore the management practices and theory of projects, arguing that the current practices are often ill suited to the needs of the creative economy, as they originate from industrial and technological paradigms no longer compatible with the reality of today. We note four strategic approaches to manage projects in creative business, proposing that experimental learning and selectionist processes can help to manage the ambiguity and the unknown unknowns built into the creative economy.