Analyzing the influence of thinking styles on the performance of collaborative design

• Main Authors: Chiung Cheng Liao, 廖炯程
• Other Authors: Wenzhi Chen
• Format: Others
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70048479629698062218

碩士 === 長庚大學 === 工業設計學系 === 100 === Collaborative design has become the mainstream of product design and development to increase creativity and competitiveness for industry. The performance of a design team is affected by many factors. The composition of members is one of the most important issues that worth to discuss. The purpose of this study is to discuss the relationship between the members’ thinking styles and their performance in the collaborative design process. This study recruited undergraduate industrial design students as participants, investigating the correlation between the team members’ thinking style and the performance in collaborative design. There were 48 participants the experiment. A group of two students executed the design project in a design studio course. The subjects were asked to fill out the Sternberg’s Thinking Style Inventory to establish the students’ thinking style profile before the experiment. Then, the coefficient of correlation between the team members’ thinking style profile was calculated. Finally, the correlation analysis was done to examine the relationship between project grades and team members’ thinking style. The results showed that project grades were negatively related to team members’ thinking style composition. In order to verify these finding, we re-arranged design team of two students’ thinking styles into negative correlation, positive correlation and non-correlation. Each team executed the same project in an hour. Statistically significant results showed: (1) Participants prefer executive, monarchic, local, external and conservative thinking styles in each dimensions. (2) Some participants with different background variables exhibit significantly different thinking styles. (3) Monarchic is significant negative related with the total scores, function and completeness of collaborative design project. Global is significant negative related with function. Liberal is significant positive related with creativity. (4) The team members have difference thinking style may have influence on the performance in the collaborative design team. This research hopefully can increase our understanding of the collaborative design in design thinking, design education and design project.