Automotive design sketching is crucial in the creative process, especially during conceptual design, as it facilitates shared understanding among design teams. Despite its significance, there need to be more comprehensive review papers addressing automotive design sketching in team settings. This systematic review aims to bridge this gap by identifying trends and evidence related to automotive design sketching within team settings. Employing the ROSES review flow diagram, five electronic databases – Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, SAGE, and Google Scholar – were utilized to search for relevant literature. Among the 902 non-duplicated articles initially screened, 17 studies from the past decade (2013-2023) underwent a thorough review and were integrated into the analysis. The findings emphasize the importance of team sketching, highlighting collaboration, communication, and creativity as essential values for enhancing shared understanding and design outcomes within teams. Significantly, the review uncovered a shortage of articles in recent years that encompass all three elements within a single study. This paper highlights the critical role of sketching in team-based automotive design and advocates for further research to investigate collaboration, communication, and creativity comprehensively. This knowledge is valuable for automotive designers, teams, and the industry, emphasizing the need for holistic approaches to optimize design processes and foster innovation.

Practitioners design artifacts of different kinds. Researchers and practitioners both create methods for designing such artifacts. The question arises whether those methods are actually valid and useful. In this conceptual paper, we argue that there is a need for “method corroboration”-the deliberate and reflected use and possible validation of a design method. We present a literature review of method corroboration in the IS and more specifically in the DSR literature. The findings are summarized as a conceptual model outlining eight strategies of method use, which are then condensed into a 2-by-2 framework of method corroboration. The results of this paper present insight into the current state of method corroboration in the DSR field and provide guidance for working with design methods in research and practice.

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 framework of design knowledge that can help practitioners, scholars, and educators from the design discipline to better understand the characteristics of design knowledge and the possibilities for transferring it.

During the last century designing has gone through a major change, from a predominantly individual creative process to a multidisciplinary interaction process, mainly between the engineering, economic and social sciences. Tim Browne, the scientific father of Design Thinking describes Design Thinking as essentially working in three core steps: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation.
In this contribution in the first part an analysis of the concept of Design Thinking is provided to get clearer how Design Thinking can support the designer on his way to a successful designed product or service. Design Thinking seems to be widely accepted as complex innovation method which almost guaranties creative results. However, until now there is no grounded attempt known which validates at least some of the complex, general, and partly very abstract assumptions. However, the question arises: Can design thinking be/ come a (design) method? Or do we simply believe in it? Then, the method is a myth.
In the second part we will present an analysis of Design Thinking that is based on the human thinking process as such and furthermore provides a scientific base of how designers think. Thus, the designers’ thinking process can be steered and – if necessary – modified. If Design Thinking becomes a part of the ‘normal’ thinking process other cognitive aspects become relevant for the design output, for example, the question-asking behaviour.

During design processes, interim results, i.e. ideas, are imagined, elaborated and shared in an on-going reflective creative conversation. One can argue that designers have an educational role in building a shared understanding with clients and other stakeholders, across disciplines of what the design is and why it is what it is. Especially in the context of trans-disciplinary collaboration, it is essential to reflect on what it means to collect and capture ‘the whole story’, i.e. not just the designed object, but also the context and the choices made in terms of what is of importance or essential for a resulting design. Building such a shared understanding consists of the three following steps:
1. Inventorizing and building an understanding of the system
2. A prioritization of what is of essence, what is of importance,
3. Defining a direction for seeking solutions.
We call this ‘information set’ (understanding, essence and direction) the Design Vision. Related to this view, we explore media used to depict or articulate such a vision. It will be argued that the choice of representation (text, metaphor, sketch, etc.) is highly influential on the richness and usefulness of the collected information and the following creative process.

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 culture, (4) study environment, (5) conditions for innovation, and (6) socio-economic context. We outline differences and similarities and discuss the possible impact for future design education.

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 guidelines include five evaluation principles and a framework that outlines appropriate evaluation methods for different research goals. The relevant constructs and principles were identified based on related literature. The derived evaluation matrix was then revised based on ratings of five experts who independently assigned appropriate research methods for different evaluation foci. The framework's applicability was evaluated by comparing it with ten papers from the IS and design fields. The proposed guidelines can support researchers with conducting workshop evaluations in a comparable and replicable way, which will help to improve research rigor in the future.

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 is also reflected in the canvas design. We describe the development process of the canvas and its evaluation through a workshop. As a result, the contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) It informs practitioners about the relevance of spatial workspace design for cultural change, and (2) it provides insights on an atypical canvas design.

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 product management department. The results revealed several unexpected insights that indicate a practical mismatch between user-centred design processes learned from the textbook and design practice in the healthcare sector that warrant further research.

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 creative work and learning environments. We conducted a systematic literature search within the Scopus database and identified a total of 73 relevant sources discussing creative spaces within academic, practice, and other innovation environments. Among the included sources are 51 academic publications and 22 sources from company research and illustrative coffee-table books. We analyzed the sources using three lenses of interest: (1) the types of theoretical and practical contributions that are provided, (2) the spatial characteristics that are suggested to be beneficial for creativity and innovation, and (3) the discussed potential of new technologies for designing or researching creative spaces. The results provide in-depth insight into the current state of research on the topic of creative spaces. Practitioners, educators, and researchers can use the presented overview to investigate the possible impact of creative workspace design and identify research gaps that can be filled by conducting further research in the field.

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 reflective tool to design students. Based on observation and answers from a questionnaire data reveal that guided reflection structured the process in a helpful way. It also turned out students had difficulties to switch from visualisation to verbalisation.

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 interpret weak signals. Interviews with 13 top-managers were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to allow the process to emerge. The findings confirmed earlier conclusions on perceptual filters that reduce the number and type of signals assessed. Contrary to earlier findings, the process was significantly altered to compensate for this loss in two ways. First, managers deliberately postponed their assessment of a weak signal by discussing it with people with distinct and second, some managers deliberately searched for signals that were unfamiliar and not fitting their mental model. The sample consisted of outperforming top managers, which raised questions about the generalizability of the findings in specific directions: are the alterations in the weak signal process exemplary for outperformers only, and how does its success compare to formal foresight methods. Finally, the findings have managerial relevance since they indicate how to detect and bring weak signals into the company before impact.

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 categorized according to the qualities they might provide for affecting creativity. The resulting inventory of creative spaces contributes to the emerging interest on creative workspace design by presenting inspiring best-practice examples. The shown examples provide the readers with a better understanding how a creative space could be designed in order to provide an environment for an innovative organisation. Related literature was added to explain the possible impact of specific spatial configurations.

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 academic publications and 22 sources from company research and illustrative coffee-table books that are discussed separately. We analyse the academic sources regarding their theoretical contribution, as well as regarding their scope. Finally, the included sources are categorized according to three areas of interest: (1) the addressed space types for different creative activities, (2) abstracted requirements for creative spaces, and (3) concrete characteristics and configurations of a creative space. The results provide an in-depth insight into the current state of research on the topic of creative spaces. Practitioners, educators, and researchers can use the presented overview to investigate the possible impact of creative workspace design and to identify research gaps for conducting further research in the field.

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 that they produce. The considerations, design activities and quality of solutions that design students produced in response to a given design task are examined to make an inference of mind-sets in actual design situations. 45 undergraduate students majoring in industrial design filled in a questionnaire that assessed their mind-set, and engaged in a design task. Two general types of mindsets can be discerned empirically: discerning and opportunistic. Significant differences between design students with a discerning or opportunistic mind-set could be observed. Evidence for the cultivation of a discerning mind-set in designing is found. Building on these results, recommendations on how to potentially support design teaching and learning are discussed.

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’s implementation. We identified 15
relevant themes and 39 spatial characteristics that constitute the individual users’ preferences, as well as several insights from a corporate point of view. Our gained insights on the role of the physical workspace extend the current research on idea labs. Furthermore, our findings corroborate the suggestions from related literature in terms of an idea lab’s capability to facilitate external
input, experimentation, and employees’ autonomy. The presented co-creation approach and the developed spatial recommendations can be adapted for other contexts and act as guidelines for others who want to develop creative spaces.

The effect of ex-ante information such as emerging technologies on the interpretive process is rarely investigated, although this type of 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 ways outperforming managers perceive emerging change in their environment. Top managers were interviewed to determine the role of signals of emerging change in assessments of their company’s environment. The open interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Contrary to scientific models of the market environment, as suggested in the strategic management literature, the results illustrate that top managers do not use compartmentalized models. Instead, the interviewees seem to acknowledge that their environment is highly uncertain and cannot be modeled as a mutually exclusive and complete set of compartments. As a result, they must remain open to new signals from various directions and sources. The explorative study is based on 13 interviews and serves as a starting point for further research into managerial perceptions of signals of emerging change. The findings have managerial utility for the early detection of emerging change in the company environment, thus allowing time to protect against, prepare for, or profit from change. The article’s scientific value is created by the approach which allows to infer how managers perceive their company’s environment, rather than choosing a usual method that almost necessarily leads towards compartmentalized models. It also raises theoretical questions about the role of cognition in complexity theory and its application in field studies.

Currently society undergoes disruptive changes so that the pressure on the designer in terms of MORE/BETTER/FASTER seems to be much higher than the centuries before. This contribution aims to initiate a discussion on how to gain a better understanding of what kind of design methodology should be offered to the designer to make him answer to these challenges. Especially the statement is made that there are so many empirical results about design behaviour which are not used - but would be useful to be implemented in design methodology - instead, we always start from the scratch again.

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 suggests characteristics and criteria for each type and quality and summarizes the results in a framework. A second study in a practitioner's context validated these findings. The work presented in this article contributes to a better understanding of the impact of the built environment for creative design in education and practice and might inspire designers and educators to improve the design of their work environments.

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 developed, embedded in the broader system of creative spaces, and supplemented by examples. The suggested principles provide concrete, yet adaptable, guidelines for designers, educators, and spatial planners who want to redesign their creative environments.