The Impact of Teaming and Cognitive Style on Student Perceptions of Design Ideation Outcomes

Ideation is a key component of the design process, which often takes place in team settings. The team approach to design requires the involvement of all parties demonstrating the use of their expertise and knowledge in the area. Teaming has been shown to have both positive and negative impacts on ideation activities. Cognitive style – or the stable, preferred way that people manage and seek to bring about change – helps us understand the different ways in which people solve problems individually and as part of a team. When team members’ cognitive styles are diverse, creating an effect known as cognitive gap, the team may experience the advantages of approaching problems in diverse ways, but the likelihood of conflicts and misunderstandings increases. This study investigated the relationship between cognitive style and the perceptions of students working in teams about their own ideation. Through the analysis of reflection surveys from 202 pre-engineering, engineering, and design students participating in an ideation study, we explored the following questions: (1) how does working in teams impact students' perceptions of their own ideation?; and (2) how do team members’ cognitive styles impact their perceptions of their ideation and team contributions? In this paper, we report on the significant correlations between cognitive style and changes in students’ perceptions about their ideation creativity, diversity, elaboration, and difficulty, as well as our exploration of the impact of teaming on these perceptions.

[1]  W. Heath.  The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies , 2008 .

[2]  P. Paulus,et al.  Performance and Perceptions of Brainstormers in an Organizational Setting , 1995 .

[3]  P. R. Laughlin,et al.  Groups perform better than the best individuals on letters-to-numbers problems: effects of group size. , 2006, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[4]  R. Weisberg,et al.  Following the wrong footsteps: fixation effects of pictorial examples in a design problem-solving task. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[5]  Sven G. Bilen,et al.  The impact of cognitive style on concept mapping: Visualizing variations in the structure of ideas , 2012 .

[6]  P. Paulus.  Groups, Teams, and Creativity: The Creative Potential of Idea-generating Groups , 2000 .

[7]  Howard B. Parkhurst.  Confusion, Lack of Consensus, and the Definition of Creativity as a Construct , 1999 .

[8]  A. Osborn.  Applied imagination : principles and procedures of creative problem-solving , 1957 .

[9]  Peter K. Hammerschmidt,et al.  The Kirton Adaption Innovation Inventory Find Group Problem Solving Success Rates , 1996 .

[10]  E. Salas,et al.  Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: A meta-analytic integration. , 1991 .

[11]  P. Paulus,et al.  Idea Generation in Groups : A Basis for Creativity in Organizations , 1994 .

[12]  David E. Booth,et al.  The impact and management of cognitive gap in high performance product development organizations , 2006 .

[13]  M. Kirton.  Adaptors and Innovators: A Description and Measure. , 1976 .

[14]  Horst Geschka,et al.  Modern Techniques for Solving Problems , 1976 .

[15]  Seda Yilmaz,et al.  Investigating Impacts on the Ideation Flexibility of Engineers , 2014 .

[16]  Jonathan Cagan,et al.  A Study of Design Fixation, Its Mitigation and Perception in Engineering Design Faculty , 2010 .

[17]  M. Diehl,et al.  Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: Toward the solution of a riddle. , 1987 .

[18]  Philip R. Lindsay.  Counselling to resolve a clash of cognitive styles , 1985 .

[19]  A. V. D. Ven,et al.  The Effectiveness of Nominal, Delphi, and Interacting Group Decision Making Processes , 1974 .

[20]  Tudor Rickards,et al.  Felix and Oscar Revisited: An Exploration of the Dynamics of a Real-Life Odd Couple Work Relationship , 1994 .

[21]  Dennis R. Brophy.  Comparing the Attributes, Activities, and Performance of Divergent, Convergent, and Combination Thinkers , 2001 .

[22]  Mary T. Dzindolet,et al.  Perception of Performance in Group Brainstorming: The Illusion of Group Productivity , 1993 .

[23]  Marián Kubeŝ,et al.  Dynamics of Innovation: Understanding and Influencing Communication Behaviours , 1992 .

[24]  Arthur B. Markman,et al.  An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques: Understanding the Roles of Idea Representation and Viewing Methods , 2011 .

[25]  K. Jablokow.  Developing problem solving leadership: a cognitive approach , 2008 .

[26]  Shanna R. Daly,et al.  Can experienced designers learn from new tools? A case study of idea generation in a professional engineering team , 2014 .

[27]  H. Guetzkow,et al.  A social psychology of group processes for decision-making , 1964 .

[28]  Amaresh Chakrabarti,et al.  Towards an ‘ideal’ approach for concept generation , 2003 .