Mixing Up Social Traits for Co-Design Practices

Abstract

Background Cooperating with other designers is an essential aspect of every design project. This article empirically demonstrates that mixing up designers with different social traits would be better in co-design practices than forming a design team composed of members with similar traits. Here, one way to categorize designers’ social traits was by their tendency of having “social influence” as the classification of having either a dominant or submissive trait. Methods Six co-design groups were formed: two Group Mix-up D-S – one dominant type designer and one submissive type designer; two Group D-D – two dominant type designers; and two Group S-S – two submissive type designers. They were asked to develop a fictitious vacuum cleaner and think aloud in their co-design practice. Their verbal protocols were then analyzed to see how they behaved towards each other in their co-design decision-making. Result We found that mixing up the heterogeneous social traits in a team was better for triggering a heavy “test-retest” discussion (Group D-S), and teaming up designers with the same tendencies show either a quick affirmation (Group D-D) or a tendency for last-minute decision-making (Group S-S). Marrying different social styles is beneficial for leveraging a high level of design decision-making. Conclusions Our findings suggest that mixing up different social traits in co-design practices may induce design decision-making for robust and coherent solutions. Though a scaled-up study is further needed, diverse social styles in a co-design group could trigger the members to seek different design solution spaces and be less primed to a first ideation sketch.