Collaborative design learning and thinking style awareness

Design Thinking is a human-centred innovation process, with an emphasis on deep understanding of consumers, holistically, integratively, creatively, and awe-inspiring. Design Thinking methods and techniques represents how the theory will be operationalized by following the process steps. These methods and techniques can assist in the project management, especially in the initial phase of inspiration and ideation. Another strategy that can collaborate in project management is agile management, mainly in the execution phase of a project. Agile management prioritizes individuals, interactions between them, customers, appropriate software to operate, and prompt response to changes. Thus, this study aims to propose a model to integrate design thinking and project management methods and techniques and to analyze students' projects and interactions to verify the applicability of these in ergonomic project management. For the development of the method, it was used the design science methodology, in four main steps called: Research Clarification, Descriptive Study I, Prescriptive Study, and Descriptive Study II. From the use of tools and techniques of design thinking in a project management exercise for students of two classes, it was revealed that the tools used facilitated the project development, helping from the search and organization of information until the deadline established for the delivery of the project.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2018

Future Female Leaders in Engineering (FFLIE) Program participants at Los Alamos National Laboratory were tasked to provide a design solution that would help the Bradbury Science Museum meet its educational outreach mission, using the principles and practices of Design Thinking (DT). The DT project aimed to improve the students’ skills in the areas of project planning, problem definition, qualitative data collection and organization, problem solving, and product life cycle planning to prepare them for leadership roles on future technical projects. The instructional content used in the program is summarized at the outset of each section of the paper. How the students implemented the phases of Design Thinking and the resulting products are also described, using excerpts from the final project report they prepared. Throughout the project, the design team learned how to effectively brainstorm, communicate with others, gather needed information through interviews, analyze the information,...

Architectural Education is a combination of myriad exposures, factual learning, cognitive endeavors and corrective guidance by esteemed faculties. In this age of technical and electronic revolution, the student just needs a small light to flare to a beacon. He has technology at the flick of a button and global knowledge at his fingertips. A student has a particular approach to design thinking or the creative process. Often these approaches are linked to his learning and thinking style. Learning styles is his preferred method to receive information. Design approach also showcases his thinking style. Thinking style is his preferred way to process the information he receives. However varied the experiences and backgrounds of architecture students may be, their thinking styles may match according to the nature of the design project. Hence thinking styles and learning styles may /may not be linked but they are definitely linked to their individual design processes. This Paper sets out to explore how the learning and thinking styles of an individual effect his/her design process in the architecture studio. Firstly, the Honey and Mumford learning style questionnaire( for Activists, reflectors, Pragmatists and Theorists) was tested on a random sampling of 10 students each from the first, second and third years of B.Arch. at Jamia Millia Islamia ( Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, New Delhi) and a comparison was drawn amongst the freshmen and seniors. Secondly, the Shortened Version of the Sternberg thinking styles Inventory (40 ques) for functions (Legislative, executive, Judicial) and levels (global and local) of thinking styles, was conducted on these students. The current on-going design Problem was extensively studied and mapped onto these learning and thinking styles tests, using Rasmussen design process. The performance of the students was correlated with their learning and thinking abilities and a satisfactory conclusion was drawn. Further, a studio pedagogical approach is defined to accommodate the various learning and thinking styles in the architecture design studio. It is hoped that by knowing how our students think and learn, educators and professors are able to conduct their studios far better than by assumptions. Keywords: Learning styles, thinking styles, Studio Pedagogy, design process, Architecture Education

IDSA 2012 Education Symposium, 2012

This paper represents preliminary results of comparing design thinking manifested by final-year undergraduate industrial design (ID) and mechanical engineering design (ME) students as well as their behaviors in multidisciplinary design collaborations. The programs of ID and ME both claim to implement design thinking in their curricula. The students in fact hold different understanding of design/designing and their preferred design strategies. Through the observation of two conceptual design exercises, these perceived disciplinary differences may cause conflicts within the mixed team’s design sessions, which in turn limit their design performance. Results suggest that though sharing a similar vocabulary, design thinking could be expressed in a myriad of ways. More efforts are required to forge design thinking as a true “common ground” that facilitates inter-disciplinary collaborations.

Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2017

Ideation is a key component of the design process, which often takes place in team settings. The team approach to design requires the involvement of all parties demonstrating the use of their expertise and knowledge in the area. Teaming has been shown to have both positive and negative impacts on ideation activities1–5. Cognitive style – or the stable, preferred way that people manage and seek to bring about change – helps us understand the different ways in which people solve problems individually and as part of a team. When team members’ cognitive styles are diverse, creating an effect known as cognitive gap, the team may experience the advantages of approaching problems in diverse ways, but the likelihood of conflicts and misunderstandings increases6. This study investigated the relationship between cognitive style and the perceptions of students working in teams about their own ideation. Through the analysis of reflection surveys from 202 pre-engineering, engineering, and design students participating in an ideation study, we explored the following questions: (1) how does working in teams impact students' perceptions of their own ideation?; and (2) how do team members’ cognitive styles impact their perceptions of their ideation and team contributions? In this paper, we report on the significant correlations between cognitive style and changes in students’ perceptions about their ideation creativity, diversity, elaboration, and difficulty, as well as our exploration of the impact of teaming on these perceptions.

European Journal of Engineering and Formal Sciences

Architectural engineering students are constantly dealing with ill-defined and tangled design problems. Many scholars accentuated the importance of creative thinking in tackling such wicked and complex problems. Accordingly, getting engaged in an ill-defined problem solving process requires specific personality traits that are often critical to creativity and innovation in design. In that sense, architectural engineering curricula need to provide various strategies through which such individual skills can be nurtured and developed. The objective of this study is to empirically identify the different patterns of students’ approaches in solving problems and the role of group discussions in such a process. The study adopted a qualitative approach, in a live class setup, through a series of workshops to allow for in-depth exploration of the students’ problem solving skills and abilities. The intention is to help students in discovering and in being aware of their own way of solving prob...

Proceedings of the Design Society: DESIGN Conference

The present study analyzes the impact of a Design Thinking course on undergraduate students during an academic term. The impact was measured on three key outcomes: teamwork, problem-solving and creativity; using VALUE rubrics. The evaluation was carried out at three different moments during the course. Three types of evaluators participated: facilitators, students (self-evaluation) and peers. The results show statistically significant improvement on the three outcomes comparing students’ initial and final performance. Despite the promising results, the current study has some limitations.

DS 95: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2019), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. 12th -13th September 2019, 2019

Creativity forms the base for innovation. Thus, facilitating thinking outside of one's expertise and allowing the scope of exploration to build new knowledge becomes the challenge. Creative thinking often results from transferring problem solutions from one industry or domain to another through fusion of knowledge that has not been connected before. In the idea generation process, external sources of information are tapped to exploit multiple resource domains facilitating divergent exploration. While developing solutions, one is only able to notice a limited section of the environment due to constraints of limited cognitive abilities and established thinking patterns [1]. To analyse this, an exploratory study was conducted with undergraduate engineering students and their application of the generative design process in coming up with design solutions for given design tasks. Results demonstrated that divergent & convergent thinking stimulated opportunity identification and solution generation, thus improving the originality and diversity of ideas. Kulogun et al mentions, "To perceive, interpret and communicate the world and the facts differently is an important goal of design education and can only be obtained through creative thinking" [2]. This study aims to identify the generative stage of the creative process and help enable opportunities for creative ideation. The study suggests that design education in non-design disciplines can enhance creative exploration and facilitate innovative problem-solving solutions. The generative framework can further help define pedagogic interventions for teaching design process to large classes of nondesign students.

Design Research Society, The 7th. International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 2023

Design education encompasses a multifaceted, iterative process, including research and application studies. The organisation in a design studio focusing on idea generation and product concept development requires sequential steps within the appropriate design methods. This study examines the applicability and effectiveness of design thinking (DT) tools at the educational level by considering the project's target audience with the human-centred design (HCD) approach that puts the user at the centre of the design process. Correspondingly, a selected virtual design studio (VDS), handled by Industrial Design second-year students at Istanbul Beykent University, serves as a case study. The project process was planned weekly by selecting the DT Toolbox templates as a reference source. During the process, the submissions of students' templates, their active participation, and feedback were observed by lecturers in detail. In conclusion, various positive effects were determined, such as the fact that the stepwise study through DT tools increases the focus of design students, the awareness of the importance of process followup in design education, and the learning of the DT and HCD methods provided effectively.