Fostering collaboration and interactions: Unveiling the design thinking process in interdisciplinary education

This research evaluated the feasibility of the design thinking process for interdisciplinary education by examining detailed interactions and design activities. Factors such as the major, personal creativity modes, interactions, and design activities were explored through the verbal protocol analysis of interdisciplinary teams comprising arts- and engineering-background students. Dual protocol analyses on the design thinking process based on the design activity and team interaction coding scheme was conducted through an investigative designing project where participants followed 5 phases of the design thinking process- empathy, define, ideate, prototype and test. The results revealed the crucial role of clarifying activities in the ‘empathy’ and ‘define’ phases to support the grounding process, which develops effective communication in interdisciplinary teams based on the common ground theory. Furthermore, composing interdisciplinary teams by diversifying the major and the personal creativity modes, and promoting positive social-emotional interactions in the ‘empathy’ and ‘ideate’ phases could support effective interdisciplinary design thinking courses. The findings could suggest effective interdisciplinary design thinking courses to improve the communication skills and attitudes of students required for addressing complex future problems.