Dialogue for design teams: A case study of generative conversations for dealing with diversity

In the Integrated Product Design master’s at Industrial Design Engineering, there is a growing diversity in students. In recent years we increasingly noticed that diversity could lead to complications within the various student teams. Examples are miscommunication, frustration, and interpersonal conflicts. This growing diversity between the team members strongly appeals to their ability to deal with these complications in a constructive way. Via a KPI tracking system we kept track of team performance and we identified four aspects affecting the team dynamics within the Advanced Embodiment Design project team [1]. This paper presents the case study of one of the student design-teams which was highly dysfunctional in design approach and conflicting cultural differences. It made this group perform at a lower level. Theory U [2] and dialogue techniques [3] were an unfamiliar approach for student design teams. Interventions using generative conversations stimulated connectedness between the team members and improved the team dynamics. The use of culture mapping [10] proofed to be a valuable tool to bridge the culture gap. Although this case study only describes one student design team, the drastic improvements resulted in the team winning the iF Design Talent Award 2020. The findings are promising, and further research is needed to investigate the generalizability of these approaches for Industrial Design Engineering education.