INFORMATION BEHAVIOR IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN TEAMS
Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Badke-Schaub, P.
Author: Ensici, Ayhan; Badke-Schaub, Petra
Series: ICED
Section: Human Behaviour in Design
Page(s): 414-423
Abstract
A common challenge in business life is the need to compose multidisciplinary teams to foster efficiency and innovative thinking by using different expertise on a problem or project. The research area of this study is to analyze information dimensions that occur in multi-disciplinary design teams during their problem solving activity. In order to observe and record multidisciplinary information behavior of design team work, a design task in a laboratory environment has been set up. For in-depth understanding of the process the verbal transcripts have been analyzed and coded according to ‘design content’ and ‘information behavior’. The data describe the information behavior through the design process and to define the flow of information within the process. The results gained from the frequency and duration analysis clearly state that using more information or dedicating bigger portion of time to information behavior do not help the team to come up with the desired outcome. The results of design content analysis provides a thorough understanding of the information flow based on the design content.
Keywords: MULTIDISCIPLINARY INFORMATION; DESIGN TEAMS; DESIGN INFORMATION; COGNITIVE PROCESS