Junior designers are not trained to cope with critical situations and conflict at work. Most design schools do not educate their design students to prepare them for (potential) conflict. As a result, junior designers often do not have conflict-handling skills to handle critical situations and conflicts. While some tools and methods exist to help them make responsible design choices, these often address value differences underlying (potential) conflict without taking the perspective of the designer, and thus without supporting young designers to start by reflecting on their own intrinsic values.The aim of this study is to find a way to help junior designers to reflect effectively on critical situations, thereby improving their conflict-handling skills. Data was collected through four steps in an action research. Researchers collaborated with an identity programme for junior design professionals. Insights from try-outs and small interventions were transferred into design requirements for an approach to educate and facilitate junior design professionals to reflect more effectively on critical situations.

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Junior design professionals experience conflicts in collaboration with others, with value differences being one of the issues influencing such conflicts. In a retrospective interview study with 22 design professionals, we collected 32 cases of perceived conflicts. We used a grounded theory approach to analyse these cases, resulting in five conflict categories that group 24 distinct value differences arising in 10 critical moments, an event that causes the value-based conflict. Thus, value differences are underlying the perceived conflicts of junior design professionals on many different occasions during collaboration with others. Conclusions are drawn on setting up guidelines for addressing values in co-design practices and supporting junior designers in their professional development.

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