Design Thinking Research

Design Thinking is undergoing an exciting and critical transformation. Ad hoc content and practices, based on anecdote and experience, are being displaced by new content and practices grounded in empirical evidence and rigorous theory. To bring this new knowledge to both designers and design teams, a new approach to design instruction is required. The radical point of view of our research suggests that the work of design teams is a performative act (designing-as-performance) and that design sessions are a performance of a corpus of behaviors that constitute much of the practice of Design Thinking. Furthermore, this corpus of behaviors can be trained and learned in the form of a skills repertoire called performative patterns. Performative patterns function a shared model of action and reflection which provide structure for previously undefined content (Edelman 2019). This new approach to design education involves not only the intellectual task of designing and understanding theory but a phenomenological practice of perception-action loops between the body, the environment in which the team is situated and the artifacts-media with which the team interacts. Research-based training packages promise to provide both sound theory and highly effective performance patterns which together constitute a basis for excellence in team-based design.

We are constantly striving towards improving our Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), in which we convey design thinking skills to thousands of learners. In this chapter we describe how lessons learned from our first MOOC and different educational frameworks influenced the course design for our second MOOC on synthesis, idea generation and idea selection. We present general survey results from the second course as well as a preliminary analysis and discussion of the synthesis assignment task.

Many educational institutions teach design thinking as a way to enhance student creativity. But does design thinking really promote a creative practice? By comparing a design thinking process to a creative process we argue that, when done well, design thinking does promote creative practice. Furthermore, we present both a student-centered tool and an instructor-centered tool that capture design driven creative practice.

When it is done well, design teamwork is a fun, creative, and productive activity. However, the learning of effective design teamwork is hampered by lack of exposure to variation in design contexts, lack of deliberate practice and lack of appropriate feedback channels. In this chapter we present immersive Virtual Reality (VR) in accompaniment to action-reflection pedagogy as a solution to augmenting design team learning. A prospective case of using VR to augment design teamwork practice is discussed and a research agenda is outlined towards understanding VR as a medium for design teamwork, investigating its influence on design team self-efficacy and implementing it in design education courses.

Collectives gather online around challenges they face, but frequently fail to envision shared outcomes to act on together. Prior work has developed systems for improving collective ideation and design by exposing people to each others’ ideas and encouraging them to intermix those ideas. However, organizational behavior research has demonstrated that intermixing ideas does not result in meaningful engagement with those ideas. In this paper, we introduce a new class of collective design system that intermixes people instead of ideas: instead of receiving mere exposure to others’ ideas, participants engage deeply with other members of the collective who represent those ideas, increasing engagement and influence. We thus present Hive: a system that organizes a collective into small teams, then intermixes people by rotating team membership over time. At a technical level, Hive must balance two competing forces: (1) networks are better at connecting diverse perspectives when network efficiency is high, but (2) moving people diminishes tie strength within teams. Hive balances these two needs through network rotation: an optimization algorithm that computes who should move where, and when. A controlled study compared network rotation to alternative rotation systems which maximize only tie strength or network efficiency, finding that network rotation produced higher-rated proposals. Hive has been deployed by Mozilla for a real-world open design drive to improve Firefox accessibility. This work first appeared as: Salehi, Niloufar, and Bernstein, Michael S. “Hive: Collective Design Through Network Rotation.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2.CSCW (2018): 151.

In software design teams, communication between programmers and non-programming domain experts is an ongoing challenge. In this communication, source code documents could be a valuable artifact as they describe domain logic in an unambiguous way. Some programming languages, such as the Smalltalk programming language, try to make source code accessible. Its concise syntax and message-passing semantics are so close to basic English, that it is likely to appeal to even non-programming domain experts. However, the inherent obscurity of technical programming details still poses a significant burden for text comprehension. We conducted a code-reading study in form of a questionnaire through Amazon Mechanical Turk and SurveyMonkey. The results indicate that even in simple problem domains, a simple English text is more comprehensive than a simple Smalltalk program. Consequently, source code in its current text form should not be used as a reliable communication medium between programmers and (non-programming) domain experts.

What differentiates an average conversation from a creative conversation? In this book chapter, we answer this question by looking at coherence styles of design conversations. With the help of the Coherence Style Framework (CSF), we are able to illustrate what divergent and convergent thinking on the conversational level looks like. Highly creative teamwork is represented as an alternation between local disruption (local low coherence) and global integration (global high coherence). This has implications for the current practices of idea generation of design thinking and innovation teams.

While previous studies have begun to investigate the neuroscience of design thinking, current knowledge is still limited. One limitation faced to date, is the need for a naturalistic design methodology that can incorporate the inherit properties of design thinking in a neuroscientific design. Here we will introduce the concept of neuroscience in design thinking both at the individual level as well as in teams and propose an experimental design to study the neuroscience of design that imposes as little constraints as possible on the natural flow of team collaboration during a design thinking event.

Reflection—the activity of reasoning through an action that has occurred—has been shown to be of importance to the development of design expertise. Although design reflection has been widely studied previously, several gaps in the knowledge still exist. First, previous work in design reflection has been mostly limited to descriptive and prescriptive research, while very few researchers investigated the effect of design reflection on performance of individuals and teams. Second, previous researchers limited the study of reflection to the language used and its reference to the design problem or solution space. Third, previous work on design reflection has not taken into account the antagonist of reflection—i.e., rumination. Rumination is characterized as repetitive and persistent evaluation of the meaning, causes, and consequences of one’s affective state and personal concerns, and has been shown to negatively affect creativity and problem solving. In this project, we planned to address these limitations by (1) assessing the effects of different types of reflection on creative performance; (2) going beyond the frontier of language (or speech) and additionally investigating the role of brain and interaction dynamics during design reflection; and (3) including psychological construct of rumination in addition to reflection. We hypothesized that given the critical importance of reflection in design thinking, our approach will provide a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between brain dynamics, design reflection, and creativity.

Collaborative virtual environment groupware is—despite of notable research efforts over several years—still not common in users’ workplaces. Reasons are high costs of engaging in collaboration next to the loss of information and capabilities that people enjoy in co-located settings. Low-fidelity prototyping is a way for co-located teams to create joint understandings and to gather feedback in early design stages. When it comes to geographically dispersed teams, dedicated tools are required that help to fulfill tasks at hand, while enabling team members as much as possible to apply working modes known from co-located settings. We present a web browser-based collaborative virtual environment that supports the joint real time creation of three-dimensional low-fidelity prototypes. It is a cross-platform application that runs on a multitude of hardware devices. While focusing on usage with virtual reality hardware, users may also freely participate when there are only traditional input and output devices available. The system provides enhanced awareness through visual remote user embodiment combined with spatial audio communication.

Physical manipulation is a key part of externalizing representations of knowledge and the creative process. However, contemporary tools for remote collaboration ignore physical manipulation and the haptic modality. We are interested in exploring remote physical manipulation in the context of ideation and brainstorming. Augmented Reality provides much of the benefits of spatial representation of remote participants, yet AR does not allow for rich physical manipulation and haptic feedback. Thus, we propose to use pairs of multi-robot system to provide synchronized haptic proxies in conjunction with the AR system. These small, tangible robots can be used directly as handles for digital models. We share insights gathered during experimentation to help design platforms combining AR and actuated tangibles, and present several application scenarios to illustrate their potential for remote collaboration.

Recent evidence suggests that design thinking can contribute to agile software development by increasing attention towards user needs as well as collaboration in interdisciplinary teams. However, there is a lack of understanding and support on how to facilitate the integration of design thinking activities into the daily work of agile development teams. Our work extends existing research on integrating design thinking with agile software development methodologies by developing and validating a toolbox that software teams can use in their everyday work. We present the DT@IT Toolbox, a collection of design thinking methods targeted at design thinking novices that aims to support everyday software development activities. The toolbox was evaluated with a team from an SME based in Germany over a period of 12 weeks. As a result, participants reported that using the DT@IT Toolbox led to a better communication within the team, enhanced problem-solving skills, increased empathy towards users and led to a better understanding of the users needs.

To better understand the issues designers face as they interact with developers and use developer tools to create websites, we conducted a formative investigation consisting of interviews, a survey, and an analysis of professional design documents. Based on insights gained from these efforts, we developed Poirot, a web inspection tool for designers that enables them to make style edits to websites using a familiar graphical interface. We compared Poirot to Chrome DevTools in a lab study with 16 design professionals. We observed common problems designers experience when using Chrome DevTools and found that when using Poirot, designers were more successful in accomplishing typical design tasks (97–63%). In addition, we found that Poirot had a significantly lower perceived cognitive load and was overwhelmingly preferred by the designers in our study.

Doctor-patient sessions require more than the mere application of the doctor’s medical knowledge with respect to the patient. Correct diagnoses and effective treatments depend strongly on a functioning interaction between doctor and patient, as well as on high-quality case documentation. We develop the software system Tele-Board MED (TBM), which offers unique support for medical consultations by allowing doctors and patients to take digital notes jointly. This chapter describes the hands-on experience psychotherapists make when using TBM for the first time in consultation sessions with patients. We look at three interlinked aspects of computer-supported therapist-patient teamwork: (i) the therapists’ user experience regarding TBM, (ii) the interaction between therapist, patient and the TBM system and (iii) the effectiveness of a TBM feature to generate official clinical documents automatically. The study shows that even in the very first treatment session with TBM, therapists come to feel comfortable taking open, digital notes. TBM is used by therapists and patients not only for documentary purposes, but also as a tool to facilitate the therapeutic conversation. Regarding the therapist’s administrative task of writing official clinical case reports, the study shows that even therapists who use TBM for the first time save 60% of their regular working hours when compiling official clinical documents after treatment sessions.

Since their inception, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have generated significant attention from students and particularly lifelong learners. This has led to increased interest from academic institutions to develop their own online platforms or to collaborate with other existing platforms, such as edX, to offer their MOOCs. This chapter focuses on openHPI, the MOOC platform offered by the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany. One of the platform’s important features is the Collab Space, a virtual private space for groups and teams in which they can interact and collaborate on assignments and projects using a set of communication and collaboration tools. The conducted study examines the current state of the Collab Space from a learner’s perspective by assessing the functionality of its communication and collaboration tools and how they are being used by the participants. We applied a design thinking approach to carry out the study and to develop solutions for some of the platform deficiencies revealed by the study. During the study, we observed teams while performing tasks and interacting together in the Collab Space, and evaluated how the teams used their tools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted during two stages of the study. We argue that by applying the design thinking methodology and putting participants at the center of our research, new insights on how to improve the user-centeredness of the Collab Space can be achieved. We conclude this chapter by outlining next steps for research and potential future opportunities.

Companies are recognizing more and more the potential of work spaces to increase their employees’ creativity, well-being, and performance. However, (re-)designing work space is not an easy task and, hence, many companies ask for recommendations and advice from a researcher’s perspective. Taking these rising demands and experiences with work space design projects in organizations as a starting point, we link a practitioner’s with a researcher’s view. In this chapter we present prominent pitfalls of workspace (re-)design through the lens of theories, selected concepts, and frameworks. In particular, we deal with the three issues of (1) a too narrow understanding of work space, (2) a lack of understanding of the status quo, and (3) a missing awareness of the behavioral component of space and its potential for change management. Perspectives from theory give enhanced reflection on each issue. In addition, tools and examples allow us to transfer the theoretical knowledge into action in form of workshops or initiatives as part of a space (re-)design project. Researchers receive an overview of the issues that are relevant for practitioners and which also indicate topics for further research. Practitioners are provided with a better understanding of relevant concepts and actionable tools for their work space-related projects.