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Design Thinking Research pp 35–51Cite as

Diagnostics for Design Thinking Teams

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Part of the Understanding Innovation book series (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.

Keywords

  • Design Thinking
  • Team Interaction
  • Concept Generation Activities
  • Design Outcomes
  • Multi-disciplinary Teamwork

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-19641-1_4
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Notes

  1. 1.

    User empathy and perspective-taking.

  2. 2.

    Ideation, prototyping, and testing.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Design Research, Stanford University, Building 560, 424 Panama Mall, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Neeraj Sonalkar, Ade Mabogunje, Gina Pai & Aparna Krishnan

  2. Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Bernard Roth

Authors
  1. Neeraj Sonalkar
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  2. Ade Mabogunje
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  3. Gina Pai
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  4. Aparna Krishnan
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  5. Bernard Roth
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Neeraj Sonalkar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering, Potsdam, Germany

    Hasso Plattner

  2. Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering, Potsdam, Germany

    Christoph Meinel

  3. Center for Design Research (CDR), Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Larry Leifer

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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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