scholarly journals Sharedness of team mental models in the course of design-related interaction between architects and clients

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hernan Casakin ◽  
Petra Badke-Schaub
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Team Mental Model ◽  
The Individual

This study deals with the role of mental models in the coordination of team activities during design problem-solving. The work centers on the sharedness of mental models in a design team setting, mainly on the interaction between an architect and two clients. A major goal is to gain insight into how modifications in mental models affect coordination, and how sharedness develops through the process. Our focus is to explore, through a case study, the individual contributions of the architect and the clients to coordination of the work process, and how sharedness of the development of the team mental model evolves in the early stage of concept generation. Our claim is that work teams develop a certain degree of sharedness of the mental models of individual team members during information exchange. This team mental model can be insufficient or even wrong, but as long as the team members feel agreement in the team, they coordinate their work on that basis. Thus, sharedness of mental models is believed to be a powerful team asset, especially when it is reached in the earlier phases of the design process. Our findings suggest that in order to attain sharedness among design team members, design activities related to the task mental model should be encouraged, specifically the generation of new ideas and the analysis of solutions. Implications for practice and education are suggested.

scholarly journals The congruence of mental models in entrepreneurial teams – implications for performance and satisfaction in teams operating in an emerging economy

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Ziemiański ◽  
Katarzyna Stankiewicz ◽  
Michał T. Tomczak ◽  
Beata Krawczyk-Bryłka
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
Emerging Economy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Team Mental Models ◽  
Entrepreneurial Teams ◽  
Team Mental Model

Purpose The paper aims to explore the relationship between the congruence of mental models held by the members of entrepreneurial teams operating in an emerging economy (Poland) and entrepreneurial outcomes (performance and satisfaction). Design/methodology/approach The data obtained from 18 nascent and 20 established entrepreneurial teams was analysed to answer hypotheses. The research was quantitative and was conducted using an online questionnaire. Data was collected from each of the teams at two stages. Members of entrepreneurial teams were surveyed independently, which allowed measuring the congruence of their mental models pertaining to running a venture. Findings Findings reveal that team members’ mental model congruence is significantly related to financial performance and members’ satisfaction in the case of established entrepreneurial teams. However, in the case of nascent teams, there is no relationship between analysed variables. Practical implications Implications for theory and practice are offered with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship education. The concept of team mental model congruence is proposed to be included in training of nascent entrepreneurial teams, experienced companies and students. Originality/value The concept of team mental models investigated by the authors has been underexplored in entrepreneurship research. Results indicate that at least in some entrepreneurial teams, team mental models’ congruence is related to obtained outcomes. The paper proposes that principles of effectuation and causation can serve as the lens through which the mental model pertaining to running a venture can be analysed. It allows expanding studies on the congruence of team mental models in entrepreneurial teams beyond the strategic consensus.

Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps: Testing of a New Design-by-Analogy Tool

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Scott Marshall ◽  
Richard Crawford ◽  
Matthew Green ◽  
Daniel Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Word List ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Functional Requirement ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Metrics ◽  
Engineering Design Problems ◽  
Design By Analogy ◽  
Mind Maps

Recent research has investigated methods based on design-by-analogy meant to enhance concept generation. This paper presents Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps, a new method to prompt generation of analogous solution principles drawn from multiple analogical domains. The method was evaluated in two separate design studies using senior engineering students. The method begins with identifying a primary functional design requirement such as “eject part.” We used this functional requirement “seed” to generate a WordTree of grammatically analogical words for each design team. We randomly selected a set of words from each WordTree list with varying lexical “distances” from the seed word, and used them to populate the first-level nodes of a mind-map, with the functional requirement seed as the central hub. Design team members first used the word list to individually generate solutions and then performed team concept generation using the analogically seeded mind-map. Quantity and uniqueness of the resulting verbal solution principles were evaluated. The solution principles were further analyzed to determine if the lexical “distance” from the seed word had an effect on the evaluated design metrics. The results of this study show Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps to be useful tool in generating analogous solutions for engineering design problems.

Integral Design: The Reflective Morphological Overview

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Zeiler ◽  
Perica Savanovic ◽  
Emile Quanjel
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Building Design ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Dutch Association ◽  
Building Physics

Integral Building Design is done by multi disciplinary design teams and aims at integrating all aspects from the different disciplines involved in a design for a building such as; archtitecture, construction, building physics and building services. It involves information exchange between participants within the design process in amounts not yet known before. To support this highly complex process an Integral Building Design methods is developed based on the combination of a prescriptive approach, Methodical Design, and a descriptive approach, Reflective practice. Starting from the Methodical Design approach by van den Kroonenberg, a more reflective approach is developed. The use of Integral Design within the design process results in a transparency on the taken design steps and the design decisions. Within the design process, the extended prescriptive methodology is used as a framework for reflection on design process itself. To ensure a good information exchange between different disciplines during the conceptual phase of design a functional structuring technique can be used; Morphological Overviews (MO). Morphology provides a structure to give an overview of the consider functions and their solution alternatives. By using this method it is presumed that it helps to structure the communication between the design team members and a such forms a basis for reflection on the design results by the design team members. This method is used in the education program at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven and was tested in workshops for students and for professionals from the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA) and the Dutch Association of Consulting Engineers (ONRI). Over 250 professionals participated in these workshops.

The Interplay between Culturally- and Situationally-based Mental Models of Intercultural Dispute Resolution: West Meets Middle East1

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazli Turan ◽  
Catherine H. Tinsley ◽  
Laurie R. Weingart ◽  
Soroush Aslani
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The West ◽  
Work Related ◽  
The Individual

AbstractWhen involved in disputes, people’s stereotypes about one another and the situation can influence their attributions of motives and effectiveness at resolving the dispute. Stereotypes may be of particular concern when disputing parties have little knowledge about the individual across the table. In this study, we examined how respondents from different cultures evaluated the economic and relational goals of two disputing merchants - one from the West and the other from the Middle East. We tested the extent to which respondents’ expectations of the targets’ goals were driven by: 1) cultural information about each disputant (whether the merchant-disputant comes from the West or from the Middle East) and 2) the respondent’s own culturally-based mental model for approaches to resolving work-related disputes. We found very little evidence of cultural stereotyping in that respondents views of the Target Merchants’ goals were largely independent of the said culture of the Target Merchant. We did however find strong evidence that respondents from the United States, Turkey and Qatar hold different mental models about the goals a party has when resolving a work-related dispute. In particular, US respondents had a more variable-sum orientation than the other cultural groups, especially Qataris, whose mental model evidenced a fixed pie assumption regarding economic and relational goals. For example, Qataris and Turks viewed a goal of Maximizing one’s Own Gain as impeding a goal of Maximizing the Other Party’s Gain. Similarly, Qataris viewed Defending Honor as incompatible to the goals of Relationship Building and Giving Face, whereas Americans and Turks did not hold such a view. These differences, based on the country of the respondent, are discussed in detail.

Impacts of Team Characteristics and Design Activities on Design Outcomes

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun Takai
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Concept Selection ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Team Characteristics ◽  
Cognitive Mode

This paper presents an analysis of design team characteristics and design activities that are significantly associated with design outcomes (i.e., project performances) in sophomore-level project-based design courses. Besides efficient team work, a team needs to successfully perform three design activities: concept generation, concept selection, and prototyping. In the design course, teams are formed based on students’ choice of teammates as well as on instructor assigned teams which maximize cognitive mode diversity among members. A regression analysis is performed to find variables that are significantly associated with design outcomes. These variables include team size, teaming preference, diversity of cognitive modes among team members, the average number of power tools team members have used in the past, whether or not a team experienced a team-working difficulty, the number of concepts generated before and after using creativity techniques, whether or not a team had the most successful strategy (called “winning” concept in this study) in a set of concepts from which one concept is chosen for prototyping, and timing of selecting the winning concept (at concept selection, at proof-of-concept testing, or at final testing). Design strategies used by teams, the winning concepts, results of regression analysis (variables significantly associated with design outcomes) are discussed.

Can Design Teams Be Empathically Creative? A Simulation-Based Investigation on the Role of Team Empathy on Concept Generation and Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jacquelyn Huff ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has been invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of team trait empathy on concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of noninteracting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique drawing upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicate that the elevation in team empathy positively impacted simulated teams’ unique idea generation and selection while the diversity in team empathy positively impacted teams’ generation of useful ideas. The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

There Is No “I” in Team but There Is in Innovation: How Individual Attributes Impact Team Ideation and Selection Practices

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aoran Peng ◽  
Sam Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Individual Risk ◽  
Team Composition ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Abstract While teaming is a vital component of engineering, it is important to remember that there is no team without individuals and individual behavior can drive team outputs. One of these individual factors that may manifest itself at the team level is individual risk-taking attitudes, which can be impacted by personality and preferences for creativity. However, a gap exists in research on the impact of the team composition in these factors on creative outputs, as previous research has found that team composition plays a key role in team performance. The current work was developed to examine how the elevation and diversity of team personality and preferences for creativity impact the novelty and quality of ideas generated and selected by the team through a simulation study of 60,831 simulated teams. The results of this study show that the novelty and quality of ideas generated and selected can be predicted by the elevation and diversity of the simulated teams’ personality and PCS factors. In addition, it was found that the impact of the individual elevation and diversity factors can vary depending on the ideation trait (novelty and quality) and design stage (concept generation and selection). However, there was one variable that had a consistent positive impact on team behavior — the elevation of the Creative Confidence of the Simulated Team Members. These findings provide preliminary evidence on how individual attributes manifest themselves at the team level to impact team ideation and selection performances.

Understanding the Context of Multidisciplinary Design: Establishing Ecological Validity in the Study of Design Problem Solving

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (16) ◽  
pp. 1082-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. McNeese ◽  
Brian S. Zaff ◽  
Clifford E. Brown ◽  
Maryalice Citera ◽  
Jonathan Selvaraj
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Human Factors ◽  
Concept Mapping ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities

The need to understand the design process in all its complexity is motivated by an interest in the development of tools and technologies that would be capable of aiding collaborative design teams. This development effort depends upon an understanding of design activities as they occur within a real world context. Observations of design activities that are made without direct communication with the design team members may fail to capture many of the subtler aspects of the process - aspects that are best understood when described by the design team members themselves. In order to supplement observational studies, this paper presents a case study in which a dialog with members of a variety of collaborative design teams was established in order to elicit information about the nature of collaborative design. A knowledge acquisition technique, concept mapping, was used to achieve an understanding of the role of human factors specialists within the collaborative design process specific to the Air Force's system acquisition program. Results highlight various findings about the nature of design problem solving such as the way different organizational settings influence human factors input in the design process/product. The paper discusses the usefulness of concept mapping to capture in-depth design knowledge and how this type of knowledge complements other approaches to understanding design.

Team mental model characteristics and performance in a simulation experiment

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 899-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Yang ◽  
V.K. Narayanan ◽  
Yamuna Baburaj ◽  
Srinivasan Swaminathan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Performance Feedback ◽  
Mental Model ◽  
Simulation Experiment ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Team Mental Models ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Team Mental Model ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between the characteristics of strategic decision-making team’s mental model and its performance. The authors propose that the relationship between mental models and performance is two-way, rather than one-way. Thus, performance feedback should, in turn, influence strategic behavior and future performance by either triggering or hindering the learning process. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct the research in the setting of a simulation experiment. A longitudinal data set was collected from 36 teams functioning as strategic decision makers over three periods. Findings This study provides support for the positive impacts of both the complexity and centrality of a team’s mental model on its performance. The authors also find that positive performance feedback reduces changes in complexity and centrality of team mental models due to cognitive inertia. Originality/value The study contributes to the literature by investigating the specific mechanisms that underlie mental model evolution. Different from the existing studies on team mental models that mainly focus on similarity of these shared cognitive structures, this study examines another two characteristics of team mental model, complexity and centrality, that are more relevant to the strategic decision-making process but has not been extensively studied in the team literature. In addition, this study reveals that performance feedback has different effects on team mental models depending on the referents – past performance or social comparison – which advances the understanding of the learning effects of performance feedback.

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