Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T06:31:33.923Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effect of team diversity on teams’ design space: a computational approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Marija Majda Škec ,
Mario Štorga  and
John S. Gero
Marija Majda Škec*
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Croatia
Mario Štorga
Affiliation:
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Croatia Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
John S. Gero
Affiliation:
UNC Charlotte, United States of America
*
mperisic@fsb.hr

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Understanding team diversity has become essential for modern-day organisations. This study explores the impact of knowledge diversity in design teams through computational simulations. By analysing design space characteristics, we study how diverse teams perform compared to less diverse counterparts. Results reveal that highly diverse teams exhibit increased efficiency, quicker convergence, and larger but sparser design spaces. This work contributes to understanding the impact of knowledge diversity in design teams and sets the stage for future systematic studies of diversity.

Keywords

design teamsdesign cognitionteam diversitydesign spaceagent-based modelling
Type
Human Behaviour and Design Creativity
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 4: DESIGN 2024 , May 2024 , pp. 1095 - 1104
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2024.

References

Aggarwal, I. and Woolley, A.W. (2019), “Team Creativity, Cognition, and Cognitive Style Diversity”, Management Science, Vol. 65 No. 4, pp. 1586–1599. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.3001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badke-Schaub, P., Neumann, A., Lauche, K. and Mohammed, S. (2007), “Mental models in design teams: a valid approach to performance in design collaboration?”, CoDesign, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 5–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710880601170768CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badke-Schaub, P., Goldschmidt, G. and Meijer, M. (2010), “How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas?”, Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 119–133. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8691.2010.00553.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Björklund, T.A. (2013), “Initial mental representations of design problems: Differences between experts and novices”, Design Studies, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 135–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2012.08.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodla, A.A., Tang, N., Jiang, W. and Tian, L. (2018), “Diversity and creativity in cross-national teams: The role of team knowledge sharing and inclusive climate”, Journal of Management & Organization, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 711–729. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2016.34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, B.T. and Ball, L.J. (2016), “Creative analogy use in a heterogeneous design team: The pervasive role of background domain knowledge”, Design Studies, Vol. 46, pp. 38–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2016.07.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahlin, K.B., Weingart, L.R. and Hinds, P.J. (2005), “Team Diversity and Information Use”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 48 No. 6, pp. 1107–1123. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2005.19573112CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ensici, A., Badke-Schaub, P., Bayazıt, N. and Lauche, K. (2013), “Used and rejected decisions in design teamwork”, CoDesign, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2013.782411CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frigotto, M.L. and Rossi, A. (2012), “Diversity and Communication in Teams: Improving Problem-Solving or Creating Confusion?”, Group Decision and Negotiation, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 791–820. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-011-9250-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friis, S.A.. (2015), “Including diversity in creative teamwork in design education”, International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation, Vol. 3 No. 3–4, pp. 239–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/21650349.2014.892233CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gero, J. and Milovanovic, J. (2022), “Creation and characterization of design spaces”, DRS2022, Bilbao. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.265CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gero, J. and Milovanovic, J. (2023), “What is happening when designers from different disciplines work together”, Expanding the Frontiers of Design, Routledge, London, pp. 371–388. https://doi.org/10.1201/b22630-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gero, J.S. (1990), “Design prototypes: A knowledge representation schema for design”, AI Magazine, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 26–36. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v11i4.854Google Scholar
Gero, J.S. and Kan, J.W.T. (2016), “Empirical results from measuring design creativity: Use of an augmented coding scheme in protocol analysis”, Proceedings of ICDC 2016, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.Google Scholar
Hoisl, K., Gruber, M. and Conti, A. (2017), “R&D team diversity and performance in hypercompetitive environments”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 7, pp. 1455–1477. doi.org/10.1002/smj.2577CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwitz, S.K. and Horwitz, I.B. (2007), “The Effects of Team Diversity on Team Outcomes: A Meta-Analytic Review of Team Demography”, Journal of Management, Vol. 33 No. 6, pp. 987–1015. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308587CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, X., Hsieh, J.P.-A. and He, W. (2014), “Expertise dissimilarity and creativity: The contingent roles of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 99 No. 5, pp. 816–830. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036911CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hundschell, A., Razinskas, S., Backmann, J. and Hoegl, M. (2022), “The effects of diversity on creativity: A literature review and synthesis”, Applied Psychology, Vol. 71 No. 4, pp. 1598–1634. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12365CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Kan, J.W.T. and Gero, J.S. (2018), “Characterizing innovative processes in design spaces through measuring the information entropy of empirical data from protocol studies”, AIEDAM, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0890060416000548CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiernan, L., Ledwith, A. and Lynch, R. (2020), “Comparing the dialogue of experts and novices in interdisciplinary teams to inform design education”, Int J Technol Des Ed, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 187–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-019-09495-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Knippenberg, D., De Dreu, C.K.W. and Homan, A.C. (2004), “Work Group Diversity and Group Performance: An Integrative Model and Research Agenda”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 89 No. 6, pp. 1008–1022. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.6.1008CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Knippenberg, D. and Mell, J.N. (2016), “Past, present, and potential future of team diversity research: From compositional diversity to emergent diversity”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 136, pp. 135–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.05.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Knippenberg, D., Nishii, L.H. and Dwertmann, D.J.G. (2020), “Synergy from diversity: Managing team diversity to enhance performance”, Behavioral Science & Policy, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 75–92. https://doi.org/10.1353/bsp.2020.0007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kokotovich, V. and Dorst, K. (2016), “The art of ‘stepping back’: Studying levels of abstraction in a diverse design team”, Design Studies, Vol. 46, pp. 79–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2016.07.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krus, P. (2015), “Design Space Configuration for Minimizing Design Information Entropy”, ICoRD’15, Springer, pp. 51–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2232-3_5Google Scholar
Lapp, S., Jablokow, K. and McComb, C. (2019), “KABOOM: an agent-based model for simulating cognitive style in team problem solving”, Design Science, Vol. 5, p. e13. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2019.12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinec, T., Škec, S., Perišić, M.M. and Štorga, M. (2020), “Revisiting Problem-Solution Co-Evolution in the Context of Team Conceptual Design Activity”, Applied Sciences, Vol. 10 No. 18, p. 6303. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10186303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McComb, C., Cagan, J. and Kotovsky, K. (2015), “Rolling with the punches: An examination of team performance in a design task subject to drastic changes”, Design Studies, Vol. 36, pp. 99–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2014.10.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Men, C., Fong, P.S.W., Luo, J., Zhong, J. and Huo, W. (2019), “When and how knowledge sharing benefits team creativity: The importance of cognitive team diversity”, Journal of Management & Organization, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 807–824. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2017.47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menold, J. and Jablokow, K. (2019), “Exploring the effects of cognitive style diversity and self-efficacy beliefs on final design attributes in student design teams”, Design Studies, Vol. 60, pp. 71–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2018.08.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, M. and Mougenot, C. (2022), “A systematic review of empirical studies on multidisciplinary design collaboration: Findings, methods, and challenges”, Design Studies, Vol. 81, p. 101120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2022.101120CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ou, X., Goldschmidt, G. and Erez, M. (2023), “The effect of disciplinary diversity on design idea generation in dyadic teams”, Design Studies, Vol. 86, p. 101184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2023.101184CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, W.-W., Lew, J.Y. and Lee, E.K. (2018), “Team Knowledge Diversity and Team Creativity: The Moderating Role of Status Inequality”, Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, Vol. 46 No. 10, pp. 1611–1622. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.7051CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrício, L. and Franco, M. (2022), “A Systematic Literature Review about Team Diversity and Team Performance: Future Lines of Investigation”, Administrative Sciences, Vol. 12 No. 1, p. 31. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12010031CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perišić, M.M., Martinec, T., Štorga, M. and Gero, J. (2019a), “A computational study of the effect of experience on problem/solution space exploration in teams”, Proceedings of the Design Society: ICED, Cambridge University Press, pp. 11-20. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perišić, M.M., Štorga, M. and Gero, J. (2019b), “Exploring the effect of experience on team behavior: a computational approach”, Design Computing and Cognition '18., Springer, pp. 595–612. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05363-5_32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perišić, M.M. (2020), Multi-agent system for simulation of team behaviour in product development, [PhD Thesis], University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.Google Scholar
Perišić, M.M., Štorga, M. and Gero, J. (2021), “Computational study on design space expansion during teamwork”, Proceedings of the Design Society, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, pp. 691-700. https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.69CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perišić, M.M., Štorga, M. and Gero, J. (2023), “The emergence and impact of synchrony in design teams”, Proceedings of the Design Society, Vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3385-3394. https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2023.339CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahmi, D.Y. and Indarti, N. (2019), “Examining the relationships among cognitive diversity, knowledge sharing and team climate in team innovation”, Team Performance Management, Vol. 25 No. 5/6, pp. 299–317. https://doi.org/10.1108/tpm-11-2018-0070CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stempfle, J. and Badke-Schaub, P. (2002), “Thinking in design teams - an analysis of team communication”, Design Studies, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 473–496. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0142-694x(02)00004-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Usher, M. and Barak, M. (2020), “Team diversity as a predictor of innovation in team projects of face-to-face and online learners”, Computers & Education, Vol. 144, p. 103702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103702CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wen, J., Qualls, W.J. and Zeng, D. (2021), “To explore or exploit: The influence of inter-firm R&D network diversity and structural holes on innovation outcomes”, Technovation, Vol. 100, p. 102178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2020.102178CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelaya-Zamora, J. and Senoo, D. (2013), “Synthesizing seeming incompatibilities to foster knowledge creation and innovation”, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 106–122. https://doi.org/10.1108/13673271311300822CrossRefGoogle Scholar