Shared mental models—linking team cognition and performance

In order to meet the increasingly complex demands of design in multidisciplinary teams, designers have to interact and thereby to interweave their mental models (MM). Yet, neither is it clear which content of MM should be shared to perform design tasks effectively, nor is the process of the development of shared mental models (SMM) quite understood. The two studies presented in this article were conducted to gain insights into the cognitive processes of designers working together in a team, and to clarify the impact of SMM on team performance. Process-oriented research strategies were applied to groups of mechanical engineering students and to multidisciplinary project teams in the automobile industry. The results indicated that not the SMM of the whole group but the SMM of subgroups were related to group performance. Moreover, this link to performance is only supported by the SMM about team members' skills (SMM_team) and about the process of interaction (SMM_process). As a conclusion of the latter result, more attention should be paid to the development of common knowledge about group interaction and team members' abilities in the everyday work life of project teams. In addition, observational data showed that motivational aspects like the feeling of competence should be considered when analysing the influence of SMM. Finally, a conceptualisation of the development and interplay of mental submodels is proposed.     

How cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking—a situation specific analysis

Abstract

The growing trend of co-creation and co-design in cross-cultural design teams presents challenges for the design thinking process. We integrate two frameworks, one on reasoning patterns in design thinking, the other on the dynamic constructivist theory of culture, to propose a situation specific framework for the empirical analysis of design thinking in cross-cultural teams. We illustrate the framework with a qualitative analysis of 16 episodes of design related conversations, which are part of a design case study. The results show that cultural knowledge, either as shared by the cross-cultural team or group specific knowledge of some team members, shape the reasoning patterns in the design thinking process across all the 16 episodes. Most of the design discussions were approached by the designers as problem situations that were formulated in a backward direction, where the value to create was known first. Then the designers were using available cultural knowledge to articulate the unknown what to design (products/services) and how the design would work (the working principles of product/services). In conclusion, we demonstrate a novel approach for understanding how cultural knowledge shapes core design thinking in specific situations.     

Editorial

The aim of this research is to develop automated computational methods that visualise a particular social dimension of teamwork, the mutual expectations and shared knowledge that form the basis for effective collaborative work, to better facilitate its accurate analysis and interpretation. This teamwork dimension is operationalised as conceptual coherence, which is imputed from the semantic coherence of team communication. This paper presents three different information visualisation techniques for representing the social dynamics of design team collaboration based on the content of their communication. This collection of data representations was developed using a custom-made software toolkit that merges computational linguistic and information visualisation algorithms. Based on this research, several teamwork visualisation guidelines have been derived in order to transform the communications of design teams into useful devices for quantifying and representing social accounting metrics concerning the level and quality of their collaborative interactions over time.     

工程设计团队知识管理对创造力影响的研究:领导力的调节作用

现代工程设计团队的创造力与团队的领导力及知识管理水平关系密切,为了寻求提升工程设计团队创造力的有效途径,在理论分析基础上构建变革型领导力调节下的工程设计团队知识管理对创造力的影响机理模型,通过问卷调查方式获得 128 份有效数据。实证分析结果验证了模型的部分假设,研究表明:知识管理对工程设计团队创造力具有显著正向影响,并在变革型领导力对团队创造力的影响中起到部分中介作用;变革型领导力的德行垂范和个性化关怀两个维度在知识管理对工程设计团队创造力的影响中起到调节作用。研究结果有助于指导工程设计团队寻找提升创造力的方法,对于探索工程设计团队领导力、知识管理和创造力之间的相互关系具有一定的参考价值。     

The negative consequences of knowledge hiding in NPD project teams: The roles of project work attributes

Knowledge hiding, a unique concept distinct from knowledge sharing, occurs frequently in NPD project teams. Although knowledge hiding has been proven to cause distrust and reduce individual creative performance, little is known about the negative influences of knowledge hiding on team performance in new product development (NPD) projects. Drawing on organizational learning theory and job characteristic theory, this study investigates how knowledge hiding influences project team performance through team learning and the contingent roles of project-based work attributes (i.e. cross-functionality and team stability). Data were collected from a sample of 92 NPD project teams in China. The results revealed that knowledge hiding was negatively associated with project team performance. This linkage was partially mediated by team learning. Team stability played a moderating role in the relationship between knowledge hiding and team learning. Moreover, as team stability increased, the negative indirect impact of knowledge hiding on project team performance was weakened. Finally, theoretical implications, practical guidelines and limitations were discussed.     

军用电台的可用性设计分析研究

通过对目前军用电台在可用性设计方面不足的分析,找出了可用性研究存在的主要问题,提出了在军用电台产品设计过程中应引入可用性设计方法,以提高产品可用性、提升用户满意度,最终达到增加产品的竞争力的的效果,为产品可用性设计提供了一定的参考.     

产品可用性设计方法研究

通过对现有产品可用性的分析,根据产品设计中的可用性含义,提出了可用性设计原则、基于产品设计流程的可用性设计方法,为在设计过程中提高产品的可用性提供了一定的参考。     

Applying probes – from inspirational notes to collaborative insights

In user-centered design, attention has shifted from improving usability and addressing ergonomic problems to wider perspectives such as experiences in everyday life. This shift has forced user-centered practitioners to evaluate and develop tools for finding new means of understanding user experience for design. Visual, playful and open-ended probes have raised fresh interest in the design community. In order to create a deeper understanding of this approach, this paper presents the fundamental qualities of probes and, based on empirical data and literature, describes four reasons for applying them in the product development and concept design context: for inspiration, for information, for participation and for dialogue.     

Team mental models in action: a practice-based perspective

The concept of team mental models (TMMs) has much to offer the study of design teams. However, I argue that care needs to be taken in how the concept is applied because existing studies of TMMs tend to draw upon problematic assumptions from conventional cognitive psychology. These encourage a focus on cognition as a mainly individual, passive, and disembodied affair involving the rule-bound internal manipulation of symbols that is ill-suited to understanding the thoroughly social, dynamic, and emergent character of knowing in design teams. After outlining the main weaknesses of the cognitive tradition, I suggest a practice-based approach as a more secure position from which to study the role of TMMs in action. This reframing of the TMM concept has important implications not only for the existing cognitive-orientated literature on team dynamics but also for practice-based approaches which, to their detriment, have tended to avoid any reference to the role of cognitive frameworks in interpreting and guiding social action.     

Effect of a virtual project team environment on communication-related project risk

Over 150 Information Technology practitioners participated in a study of differences in communication risk between traditional project teams and those that operate virtually, with some team members physically remote. Contrary to prior research, results indicate the level of risk from inadequate communication is not significantly greater when team members are not grouped in one location. Further, despite increased dependence of virtual teams on technology for communication, there was no evidence of significantly more project risk due to technological failure. However, virtual team projects exhibited notably more risk due to insufficient knowledge transfer. A plausible explanation is decreased implicit or informal knowledge transfer in virtual environments. We conclude that the possibility of insufficient knowledge transfer should be included in virtual project risk management plans, and consideration should be given in such projects to the extent to which knowledge that is traditionally shared implicitly might be shared explicitly through electronic means.     

Enabling knowledge integration in coopetitive R&D projects — The management of conflicting logics

This paper addresses the issue of how knowledge integration can be managed in coopetitive R&D projects. The findings from this study imply that knowledge integration in a coopetitive R&D project is not built on shared knowledge or a shared understanding of the content of project work but that knowledge integration is enabled by a shared understanding of the process of project work. Such understanding can be established by the use of mechanisms such as planning and process specification and presentation genres. These mechanisms support the process of knowledge integration while simultaneously putting constraints on what knowledge is exchanged and they can structure discussions when face-to-face communication takes place. The findings further suggest that, to avoid unintended knowledge leakages, individual and collective settings of project work should be clearly separated such that problem solving stays an individual activity while decision making still rests with the project team as a collective activity.     

Knowledge integration in IPPD project: role of shared project mission,mutual trust,and mutual influence

Project integration is an important management issue related to product development performance outcomes. Design, development, production, and commercialization of new products and services require a project team's ability to acquire and integrate different knowledge bases of internal capabilities, customers, and suppliers. A literature gap exists regarding critical drivers of knowledge integration and shared knowledge in product development projects that needs to be identified and scientifically validated. Based on goal setting, social exchange, and information processing theories, the current study identifies antecedents of knowledge integration in terms of a shared project mission, mutual trust, and mutual influence, and investigates key relationships among these antecedents to determine the effect of knowledge integration on integrated product and process development (IPPD) project outcomes. Proposed hypothetical relationships among these constructs were tested on primary data collected from 191 respondents (OEM project managers and team members, suppliers, and customers) from IPPD projects from the U.S. automotive industry. With regards to the antecedents of knowledge integration in IPPD projects, our results indicate a statistically significant positive association between shared project mission, mutual trust, mutual influence and knowledge integration. Further, our results indicate a positive relationship between knowledge integration and performance outcomes measured in terms of IPPD project success and IPPD product success. Our results also indicate a partial mediating effect of mutual trust and mutual influence between the relationships of shared project mission and knowledge integration. Discussion of our empirical results, limitations, and recommendation for future studies in the area of knowledge integration in the area of IPPD projects are also provided.     

Designers’ articulation and activation of instrumental design judgements in cross-cultural user research

Abstract

Cross-cultural design practices have begun to rise in prominence, but these practices have infrequently intersected with common user-centred design practices that value the participation and lived experience of users. In this paper, we analyse a shared data-set that documented the efforts of a Scandinavian design team as they designed a co-creation workshop with Chinese consumers. We identified how the design team referred to workshop participants, focusing on how these references implicated the design team’s understanding of Chinese culture. We identified referents to the participants to locate projection of and reflection on participant interaction, and performed a thematic analysis of design and debrief activities to document the team’s articulation and activation of instrumental judgements relating to culture. The team’s instrumental judgements shifted over time, moving from totalising cultural references in the design phase to frequent translator-mediated interactions in the debrief phase. Translators ‘nuanced’ the cultural meanings being explored by the design team, while team members attempted to engage with cultural concerns by ‘making familiar’ these concerns within the context of their own culture. Implications for considering culture as a part of standard user research methods and paradigms are considered, along with practical considerations for foregrounding cultural assumptions in design activity.     

Optimal sharedness of mental models for effective group performance

This comment refers to two central concepts of Badke-Schaub et al.'s lead paper, the functionality of mental models for coping with the complexity of reality and sharedness as a prerequisite of group performance. For both ideas, a trade-off perspective is introduced. Major functionalities of mental models, e.g. organization of knowledge, not only provide benefits but also costs, e.g. oversimplification of a problem. The degree to what individual mental models in a team need to be shared in order to manage a task depends on multiple factors, e.g. the nature of the task and the developmental stage of the team. Related to the specific tasks of design teams, the idea of optimal sharedness is elaborated and conclusions on task-oriented processes in design teams are drawn.     

Used and rejected decisions in design teamwork

Decision making in design requires careful consideration, as any inaccuracies or faults can have serious consequences for the producer, the user and/or the competitiveness of the company. Research investigating decision making in design so far has mainly focused on the selection of decisions as part of technical choices and classical optimisation problems. In recent years, further research has been started to discover the characteristics of successful decision making in industry. These later, mostly single case studies shed light on some general influences on decision making but so far have not identified different relevant patterns of decision-making processes in design teams which are influential on the result and the process of decision making, such as the constituents of rejected decisions. The research study reported here was initiated to further analyse the components of decision-making processes in teams, with special emphasis on the question of how decisions develop during the design process. For example, what happens to rejected decisions in the course of the design process? The observed processes should be analysed in detail by assessing all utterances in an interaction protocol which can be used as indicators of underlying cognitive processes in decision making; this research approach is usually called protocol analysis. In this experimental study using protocol analysis, rejected decisions were compared against those that were chosen to be used in designing the final outcome. The findings show how the designers develop the solution space and illustrate the analysis of decisions as a promising approach to analyse both the individual cognitive process and the contribution of the individual to the decision-making process in design teams.     

Team development and performance in construction design teams: an assessment of a hierarchical model with mediating effect of compensation

A high-performance construction workplace invests in its human resources and facilitates their technical and innovation skills through team development. Though team development has been explored in many studies, to date, little research has disentangled how team development and compensation methods enhance team performance in construction companies. Accordingly, team development as a hierarchical, reflective construct, incorporating six associated components was extended and the variables of the model in a nomological network analysed using partial least squares (PLS). As a result, with the help of PLS path modelling, a hierarchical team development construct with the mediating effects of compensation on the relationship between team development and team performance was developed. The research analysis was completed on a sample population of 128 construction design teams and the results lead to the development of a model that shows team development has a significant direct and indirect impact on team performance. The results also confirm the mediating role of group compensation on the relationship between team development and team performance. In general, it is suggested that the design teams achieved better performance when the leaders adapted team compensation methods consistent with the team development practices.     

Perceptions of success in virtual cross-disciplinary design teams in large multinational corporations

The nature of design problems facing industry today often requires the use of cross-disciplinary teams in order to maximise innovation. Three case studies were used to answer the research question: What factors contribute to the success of virtual cross-disciplinary design teams in large multinational engineering corporations? Results indicate that factors that contribute to success include the context in which teams work, the method by which teams do their work, and the media by which teams communicate. In addition, this study also found that technology facilitates, but does not take the place of, well-defined and shared processes.     

Plug-load densities for energy analysis: K-12 schools

Benchmarking plug-load densities is essential to bypass arbitrary and/or incorrect inputs used in building energy analysis. As more building simulationists play a decision-making role for the design team, they tend to lean on building energy standards and guidelines for preliminary inputs such as plug-load densities. It is necessary for building energy standards and rating systems to implement plug-load density benchmarks to reward design teams in their efforts to reduce plug-load energy use. Using case study buildings, this paper establishes benchmark plug-load densities for K-12 schools under two new categories – classrooms with computers and classrooms without computers. Eighteen K-12 schools including 9 elementary, 2 middle, and 7 high schools are assessed for actual plug-load densities. For the same case study buildings, four existing approaches – NREL, COMNET, ASHRAE 90.1-1989, and Title-24 are evaluated for plug-load densities. Results show under- and over-estimation of plug-load densities over actual densities. The development of benchmark for K-12 schools will pave way for instituting targets for trimming plug-load densities in new and retrofit building projects.     

Thermal simulation outputs: exploring the concept of patterns in design decision-making

This paper describes the ongoing development of a building performance simulation (BPS) knowledge management scheme for design decision-making. This knowledge management scheme is developed with reference to the patterns of Christopher Alexander and colleagues, which describe commonly recurring abstract problems in architectural design together with successful abstract solutions. As such they form a ‘repository of knowledge’ on architectural design. Patterns have been used in other fields such as software engineering where they also aim at capturing expert knowledge, and their potential to do the same for BPS is explored here. Decision support using simulation is introduced and the concept of patterns described. A pattern structure is developed and some examples given. Interviews with architectural practices investigated whether patterns could support design processes, and the further development of the concept is discussed.     

Research orientations towards the ‘management’ of infrastructure assets: an intellectual structure approach

In recent decades, research on the management of infrastructure assets has increased steadily. However, there are concerns raised about the contribution of studies to a coherent body of knowledge. There is a call for a more structured understanding of the knowledge that is emerging around the management of infrastructure assets. This paper attempts to answer this call through an empirical study based on the reference lists of over 8200 articles that present their study relevant to the management of infrastructure assets. In so doing, we apply recognised techniques from bibliometric and social network analyses to visualise and identify major and minor topics, where researchers have oriented and contributed. We find that managing infrastructure assets traditionally was object-oriented, such as pavements, bridges, water and utility networks, and that attention is only now emerging on the life-cycle decision-making and organisational aspects, although the latter remains weakly linked with technical aspects. We conclude with shared research orientations in ‘managing’ infrastructure assets.