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Diagnostics for Design Thinking Teams

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Design Thinking Research

Part of the book series: Understanding Innovation ((UNDINNO))

Abstract

Multidisciplinary teamwork is a key requirement in the design thinking approach to innovation. The tools currently available for effective team coaching are limited to heuristics derived from either experienced design thinking professionals or clinical psychology practitioners. Our research aims to improve this current situation by providing design thinking managers, coaches and instructors a scientifically validated tool for augmenting design team performance. We present the development of a software tool called the IDN Tool based on the Interaction Dynamics Notation to analyze team interactions and diagnose patterns of behavior that influence design outcomes. We demonstrate the use of the IDN Tool through analysis of the interaction behaviors of seven design teams engaged in a concept generation activity, which were independently rated by a two-person Jury using the criteria of utility and novelty. Through the analysis we were able to visually isolate the interaction behaviors that had a high positive or negative correlation with the levels of novelty and utility of concepts judged a priori. With further work, this has the potential of improving in-process design team performance with a positive influence on design outcomes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    User empathy and perspective-taking.

  2. 2.

    Ideation, prototyping, and testing.

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Correspondence to Neeraj Sonalkar .

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Sonalkar, N., Mabogunje, A., Pai, G., Krishnan, A., Roth, B. (2016). Diagnostics for Design Thinking Teams. In: Plattner, H., Meinel, C., Leifer, L. (eds) Design Thinking Research. Understanding Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19641-1_4

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