ABSTRACT
Design thinking has become a common topic of conversation since Tim Brown published Change by Design (2009). The literature is rich in discussions of various approaches to design (Kimbell, 2011), case studies demonstrating the value of co-creation and the rewards of exploiting ideas in new ways, and the power of knowledge, empathy, and trust among design team members (Brown & Wyatt, 2015; Cross, 2011; Dorst, 2011; Kolko, 2015). Less attention has been given to the inner workings of design teams and the roles that factors such as intellectual capital, personality, culture, and intrinsic knowledge sharing may play during design interactions (Badke- Schaub, Roozenburg, & Cardoso, 2010). This paper seeks to shed new light on these questions from two perspectives that focus on the activities and learning experiences of the design team members. The first draws from the literature and theories of philosophy and communication. The second draws from methods and theories including discourse-linguistic analysis and network analysis. Linguistic registers, knowledge engineered semantic profiles, and network structures were constructed and applied to all DTRS11 transcripts. The results suggest that communication and language are productive perspectives for understanding the inner workings of design teams, including the nature of the team’s discourse, the nature of the design process, the roles and contributions of individual team members to the process, and the evolution of the team as a community of practice. Furthermore, the results suggest that discourse analysis, semantic analysis, and network analysis may be effective tools for developing a broader understanding of design thinking.
