Petra Badke-Schaub

• Prof. Dr.
• Head of Department at Delft University of Technology

This paper contributes with insights regarding design expertise and prototyping. Seven high performers – Outstanding Designers – were interviewed to learn about their prototyping activities. The Outstanding Designers emphasised prototyping for reflection, gaining certainty, and cooperating with clients. They expressed a strong attachment regarding...

This paper examines the critical concept of "reasonably foreseeable failures and misuse" in product design. The psychology of failures and the ethical/legal implications are highlighted. The approach aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges associated with integrating reasonably foreseeable user failure and misuse into the de...

The paper emphasizes the need to consider negative aspects of creativity, especially in design, where it can have significant societal impacts. It calls for a more comprehensive view of creativity that includes both positive and negative effects and proposes a research approach to assess the potential negative consequences of creative work.

The theoretical understanding of design knowledge is a crucial concern for research in the design discipline. This article extends the rich existing research on design knowledge by providing a unifying model of design knowledge. The insights are derived from a rigorous review of existing literature. The resulting model presents an original framewor...

Mind-sets are expected to influence the process of designing, which require designers to successfully integrate complex decision-making processes into good design solutions. The study reported here analyses whether differences in mind-sets shown by design students can influence their design processes and impact the quality of the design solutions t...

The term “creative space” describes a relatively recent phenomenon of innovative workplace design. Such creative workspaces are becoming popular in industry and academia. However, the impact of specific spatial design decisions on creativity and innovation is not yet fully understood. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on...

This paper compares two pioneering design educational approaches: the historic Bauhaus school founded in 1919 in Germany, and contemporary design thinking education, based on the example of the “HPI School of Design Thinking”. We compare both approaches according to six emerging categories: (1) curriculum, (2) multi-disciplinarity, (3) mind-set and...

This paper reports an embedded single case study from a globally operating manufacturer for digital healthcare products. Based on nine semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and a diary study among employees, we were able to gain insights on the daily business routines and interactions of the design team, the UX research team, and the produ...

Sketching and prototyping are parts of a ‘reflective conversation with materials of a design situation’ (Schön, 1992). To support this conversation, we developed a reflective tool – the Reflection Canvas – that facilitates reflection activities through sketching and prototyping on the one hand and verbalisation on the other. We introduced the refle...

Workshops are often used in the information systems (IS) and design fields to evaluate artifacts or to co-create business innovations. However, the evaluation of workshops is often conducted in a rather unsystematic and heterogenous way. This paper introduces a set of guidelines for designing or evaluating artifacts through workshops. These guideli...

The design of the workspace can be an indicator for an organization’s innovation culture. This paper introduces a canvas-based collaboration tool that facilitates both, team-based analysis of existing workspaces regarding the expressed culture, and co-creating spatial design ideas with the goal to instigate a cultural change. This two-way approach...

This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art research about creative work and learning environments. We conducted a systematic literature search within the Scopus database and identified a total of 70 relevant sources discussing creative spaces within academic, practice, or other innovation environments. Among the included sources are 48...

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorize...

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorize...

Designerly innovation tools, such as canvases, are widely used for facilitating team and collaboration processes. This paper outlines the potential design space of such innovation canvases. Based on a systematic analysis of 123 existing canvases we developed a morphological box that distinguishes between six different parameters identified as relev...

The effect of ambiguous and non-salient information on the managerial interpretive process is rarely investigated, although this information is considered to be the basis for strategic decision-making and requires a different process due to its ill-defined nature. This paper explores the process that outperforming managers used to detect and interp...

This article presents a longitudinal case study of the development process of an idea lab-from initial planning to final implementation and usage. The research approach comprised various methods, including a user study with cultural probes and a visual canvas, a focus group co-creation workshop, and a follow-up evaluation, two years after the space...

In this paper, we will discuss different processes teams undergo in situations which are difficult to work out because of their dynamic and complexity. There are a variety of requirements to be met to successfully deal with such situations: definition and analysis of the problem, appropriate handling and integration of partially non-available or ev...

Work and study environments that facilitate creative design processes—so called creative spaces—have gained an increased interest in the past years. This paper contributes to this emerging field by providing a set of guidelines for creating such environments. We developed a set of 49 abstracted design principles (patterns) that are empirically deve...

This article presents a typology of creative spaces that is relevant to facilitating creative working and learning processes for designers. Drawing on qualitative user research with cultural probes in a design thinking institution, this typology identifies five different types of creative spaces along with five related spatial qualities. The paper...

Background Over the past decades a considerable number of studies have been done on the golden ratio and the relation between their aesthetics and design. These studies, after analyzing design icons with the golden ratio, seem to prove that the golden ratio is an important principle for good design. However, these studies mainly focused on western...

Design learning can be improved by understanding the differences between individual characteristics of students and its connection with their learning processes and outcomes. This paper focusses on the differences between discerning and opportunistic mind-sets. 91 students from industrial, product or automotive design courses participated in a quas...

The physical environment in design education can have a significant impact on students' creativity, learning performance, and wellbeing. However, little attention is given to the question, how to design such spaces in a scientifically sound manner and how to involve the relevant stakeholders. Specifically, the future users of the space—students and...

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 coordinatio...

Building on the assumption that the physical environment can have an influence on the creativity of designers and design students in particular, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical propositions and evidences for this relationship. We develop various propositions about the influence of physical environments on creativity, based on eight...

Building on the assumption that the physical environment can have an influence on the creativity of designers and design students in particular, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical propositions and evidences for this relationship. We develop various propositions about the influence of physical environments on creativity, based on eight...

A way to spark design, creativity and innovation culture in the country is by encouraging Design Thinking and Creative Problem Solving in the vast spread of technical educational institutes in India. Facilitating them in engineering education would benefit students by providing them a structure to think creatively and meaningfully in their educatio...

Inspiration is a widely recognized phenomenon in everyday life. However, researchers still know very little about what the process of inspiration entails. This paper investigates designers’ approaches when selecting inspirational stimuli during the initial phases of a design process. We conducted a think-aloud protocol study and interviews with 31...

Emotion measurement is a vital aspect for new product development and product improvements (see e.g. P. Desmet & Schifferstein, 2012). Nowadays, new technological devices, data mining, and social media offer many opportunities to invigorate design research. This paper tries to combine both aspects by exploring the question, how new technologies can...

In this study, we investigated how questions influence problem (re)framing and idea shaping in design discourse. We analysed the question-asking behaviour of a multidisciplinary group of students who were tasked with designing new birthday celebration concepts. We focused on the sessions that took place during the idea generation phase of the proje...

Design education involves various teaching, learning, and designing activities, such as idea generation, writing, sketching, computer-work, planning, lecturing and listening to presentations, team work, discussions, model making, and prototyping. All these activities require particular environments. The question how these activities could be facili...

We explore the use of scenarios and design patterns by a team of designers, and analyze their contribution in the early phases of the urban design process. The results show that design patterns aided in defining problems and analyzing idea solutions, mainly from a technical and functional perspective. Scenarios, on the other hand, were helpful to g...

In diesem Beitrag wird anhand unterschiedlicher Beispiele von Teamprozessen gezeigt, welchen Anforderungen Teams gegenüber stehen, die aufgrund der Dynamik und Komplexität kaum zufriedenstellend gelöst werden können. Sowohl die Zieldefinition als auch der Umgang – d. h. Analyse und Bewertung – von teilweise nicht vorhandenen oder gar widersprüchlic...

It is postulated that students have prevailing mind-sets which influence the performance of their design learning during their university education. These mind-sets - when identified - can be influenced appropriately to augment students� design learning capabilities. In light of this assumption, this paper intends to present insights towards charac...

This survey paper explores the opportunities and challenges of new technologies and social media for design research and design ethnography in particular, and summarizes the results in a framework. Understanding users’ needs and observing their behavioral patterns becomes more and more important when designing innovative products or services. Tradi...

This research aims to develop a language-based cognitive framework in order to evaluate the performance of virtual design communities. We leveraged two existing theories on the use of language as stimuli and constructive naming in developing a coding scheme, which we used to analyze the online collaboration communications of 9 teams in OpenIDEO. Su...

The present paper introduces the Framework of Awareness to the analysis of ergonomics in design. The framework derived from a doctoral research that took the Lean Thinking perspective by adopting the concept of MUDA and its set of principles as dimensions to study designers’ behavior. Results were integrated into a Framework of Awareness to critica...

The chapter deals with the dynamic development of sharedness of mental models in design problem solving. It presents an overview of prior studies in the field, and discusses the important role of mental models in team collaboration and team coordination. A basic tenet is that sharedness of individual mental models is achieved through verbal communi...

The present paper introduces the Framework of Awareness to the analysis of ergonomics in design. The framework is part of a doctoral research that took the Lean Thinking perspective by adopting the concept of MUDA and its set of principles as dimensions to study designers’ behaviour in industry. Results were integrated into a Framework of Awareness...

This paper is part of a research project that investigates the role of the physical space, such as architecture, room layout, and furniture, on creative work processes in design educational contexts. The particular focus of this paper is to identify differences in the spatial requirements of designers in academia (students and educators) and design...

The aim of the reported study was to gain further insight into how two cognitive strategies – analogical reasoning and mental simulation – influence team dynamics in innovative product design. A particular emphasis was placed on exploring the association between these two strategies and team cohesion and team collaboration. Analogies were coded for...

This paper presents a novel ethnographic research approach based on a wearable camera that automatically takes pictures according to sensor changes within the wearer’s environment. The opportunities and challenges that are raised by such technologies are investigated and discussed. We describe an exemplary application of the approach and point out...

Mental models play a decisive role when it comes to cooperate and coordinate team activities in complex environments and contexts. However, scientific knowledge about the coordination of mental models in heterogeneous groups, and even more across different disciplines, has not yield much progress in the last decades. Mental models affect design act...

With a growing population of healthcare clients in the future, organizing for a quality and cost effective service providing becomes an increasing challenge. New online services of eHealth are proposed as innovative options for the future. Yet, a major barrier in the adoption and implementation of these services appeared to be, the lack of a new bu...

Mental models play a decisive role when it comes to cooperate and coordinate team activities in complex environments and contexts. However, scientific knowledge about the coordination of mental models in heterogeneous groups, and even more across different disciplines, has not yield much progress in the last decades. Mental models affect design act...

Design theory is the body of knowledge that provides an understanding of the principles, practices, and procedures of design. That knowledge leads to hypotheses on how designers should work, which constitute the basis of the prescriptive part of design methodology. Decision making is one of the central design activities, and has been predominantly...

The objective of this chapter is to describe the interaction between emotions and the preservation of ideas in engineering and design activities. Johnson-Laird's mental model construct of internal representations is utilized to define cognitive resistance. A description of the interaction between emotions and cognitive resistance is presented. A va...

This doctoral research takes the Lean Thinking perspective adopting the concepts of Lean Principles and MUDA as dimensions to study designers’ behavior in the research field of design and product development. A case study based approach gave ground to this exploratory research. A framework of awareness to cope with critical situations derived from...

In this paper we study the influential role of mental models in the coordination and sharedness of team activities in design problem solving. The study focuses on the development and sharedness of mental models in architectural design teams, mainly between the architect and two clients. It aims at understanding how changes in mental models affect t...

When engaging in new and ill-defined problems, designers are challenged with many ambiguous moments, such as finding how to start. This is particularly the case with novice designers. Thus, for designers, selecting and organizing information have a profound impact on the generation of creative solutions. However, much is not yet known regarding the...

The study presented in this paper investigates the development of sharedness of mental models in situations of design problem solving. A basic assumption is that sharedness of individual mental models is attained through verbal communication. Thus, the basic theoretical framework we developed is based on the classification of verbal communication o...

In this paper, we present a study on the role of verbal communication in reaching shared understanding during idea generation in design teams. More specifically, our goal is to investigate specific communication actions designers take in different communication modalities that lead to shared understanding. In order to realize this goal, we conducte...

The present research takes the Lean Thinking perspective adopting the concept of MUDA as dimension to study designers’ behavior and provides managerial support with a Framework of Awareness to critical situations in the research field of design and product development.

The selection of sources of inspiration is a crucial moment while designing, as it can enhance design creativity. Designers seem to prefer using pictorial representation modalities despite empirical investigations indicating possible disadvantages of such unimodal approaches. Therefore, it is valid to ask whether designers are disregarding other av...

Decision making in design requires careful consideration, as any inaccuracies or faults can have serious consequences for the producer, the user and/or the competitiveness of the company. Research investigating decision making in design so far has mainly focused on the selection of decisions as part of technical choices and classical optimisation p...

Creativity is a construct with many different facets and various theoretical interlinks to other psychological concepts such as flexibility or fixation (Cardoso and Badke-Schaub, 2011). Hence, there are different approaches to assess, understand and teach creativity in design. This chapter focuses on the role of team mental models in design and dis...

Creativity is a construct with many different facets and various theoretical interlinks to other psychological concepts such as flexibility or fixation (Cardoso and Badke-Schaub, 2011). Hence, there are different approaches to assess, understand and teach creativity in design. This chapter focuses on the role of team mental models in design and dis...

Searching for inspirational stimuli is an essential step in the initial stages of the design process. However, there is a lack of information on what designers search for during such a phase. There is no distinction between what student and professional designers use as inspirational sources or idea generation methods. We present the results of a q...

The need for flexibility in designers' acting and thinking processes can be seen as a core requirement for successful design practice. For designers collaborating in a team gaining cognitive flexibility is quite challenging, as cognitive processes are not directly observable for other team members and therefore hard to assess and change. The aim of...

In this paper, we present an exploratory protocol study on the use of different communication channels during design sketching. We focus on how individual designers share their mental models with other designers in a group, and analyse their use of graphical, textual, and verbal communications during concept generation. Our findings suggest that v...

On daily basis designers’ have the chore to keep one’s countenance facing critical situations with the consequence of drawbacks, delays, conflicts but often also constructive and successful outcomes. Though designers might be experienced, they are not always prepared to cope with these situations in a suitable manner. Designers can miss their orien...

The selection of inspirational sources is a crucial step while designing, which potentially can enhance creativity. However, empirical investigations have demonstrated a dual-effect that some stimuli might have during idea generation. Therefore, it is valid to discuss whether designers are disregarding other stimuli, such as textual representations...

The fundamentals of this research rely on the need to study designers’ behavior to improve designers’ performance. The research places in perspective the concepts of the Lean Thinking (LT) as dimensions to study designers behavior in different design disciplines. In this study, the situation of Muda (LT central concept) is seen as sources of critic...

In this study, we investigate the communication processes during sketching in design teams on theoretical and empirical levels, and propose two frameworks. The first one, the designcommunication block framework, categorizes the types of activities that take place during sketching, and constitutes the analysis scheme for the empirical dimension of t...

Wir möchten mit diesem Buch allen, die Interesse an grundsätzlichen Fragen zum Handeln in soziotechnischen Systemen haben, praxisnah wissenschaftlich fundierte Erkenntnisse vermitteln, die zum besseren Verständnis der Interaktionen von Menschen und Technik in komplexen Arbeitswelten beitragen. Diese Erkennt nisse können zum einen als Grundlage für...

Der Mensch als „Risikofaktor“ !? In Luftfahrt, Kernkraft, chemischer Industrie, Medizin und Militär arbeiten Menschen mit komplexen technischen Systemen. Doch in kritischen Situationen entscheidet der Mensch, nicht die Maschine – und das häufig unter Zeitdruck und hohem Risiko. Dabei können Fehler dramatische Konsequenzen haben. „Risikobranchen" be...

This chapter explores the role and development of mental models in coordination. We introduce a theoretical framework on the development of shared mental models and a measurement approach based on observational data. The basic assumption is that individual mental models are shared through verbal communication. At the beginning of a task, this is li...

The transfer and application of methods into practice is problematic. We studied the effect of 'situated' methodological support on performance in non-routine situations. Practising expert and advanced beginner designers were compared. Design methods and support to select methods were provided for solving a design-planning problem under time pressu...

When facing a design problem, both novice and expert designers tend to rely on a variety of available sources to get inspired during idea generation. Therefore, searching for and collecting diverse stimuli during the early phases of the design process is considered a well-known practice amongst designers. Despite this general assumption, there is n...

This paper is based on empirically revealed doubts on the universal preference of the golden ratio proportion. An empirical study has been conducted in order to examine differences about 'preferences of proportions' on the golden ratio between South Korean and Western preceding studies by Kimberly Elam's " Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion...

The present paper integrates an empirical research that aims to identify practices of how designers’ deliver value in designing across design disciplines. Data collected during periods of observation provide insight into the characteristics and behavior of designers sharing working environment in three design consultancies, established in Graphic d...

Searching for sources of inspiration during the design process is a widespread activity and it is considered as a crucial step for most designers, independent of the degree of expertise. However, little is known about what designers use as sources of inspiration, and how they process such information to generate ideas and solve design problems. Whe...

The present research places in perspective two of the most important concepts of the Lean Management philosophy as dimensions for research of critical situations in design and derive from such approach implications for decision-making across different design disciplines. Findings aim to improve the knowledge and understanding of design processes ac...

The present research attempts to contribute to the understanding of how designers’ thinking and acting enhance the value of the design process and delivers value to design results. The present study reports findings based on the analysis of video recorded meetings from a case study in a graphic design consultancy. This work is part of an empirical...

During creative problem-solving, designers frequently come across a variety of rich visual displays. While browsing for different sources of information, pictorial representations of existing concepts take prominence. However, once designers start generating new solution ideas to design problems, they often become too attached to some of the exampl...

Design methodology aims to provide structure that supports designers dealing with complex and complicated problems in varying projects, contexts and environments. For decades, the technique for transferring methods into practice has been discussed, mainly in reference to the limited use of methods in practice. This paper addresses three issues: pas...

The 18th International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED11, was held August 15-18th 2011 at The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Copenhagen. The Conference is the flagship event of the Design Society, a society dedicated to contributing to a broad and established understanding of development and design. The ICED series of conferences has...