Strategies for Empowering Collective Design

Abstract

Collective activities such as crowdfunding, competitions, jams and hackathons are gaining more attention in innovation management. However, within the design domain such activities are often considered as a way for mass generation of ideas, rather than processes for developing proper design solutions. Information acquisition, gaining sufficient knowledge and generating feasible ideas are among the main challenges of collective design. In this study we applied three strategies of rapid design, informed participation, and knowledge sharing to overcome these challenges. During a one-week design hackathon, we conducted a collective design project in which three teams of participants conducted autoethnography research, shared their findings by an idea crowdsourcing platform, and tested their 3D printed prototypes with potential users. Although the tests showed efficiency of rapid design and informed participation strategy, we did not find knowledge sharing effective, mainly due to the absence of collaboration among teams.

Design at hackathons: new opportunities for design research

“…Further, a design-oriented structure on the event indicates an awareness of design processes on the part of hackathon organisers. Learning about the steps in a design process encourages participants to follow the process, which, in turn, improves outcomes at hackathons (Aryana et al 2019).…”

“…Three hackathons are about healthcare(Piza et al 2018;Alamari et al 2019;McGowan 2019), and another three center around the sustainability topics of water quality(Carroll & Beck 2019), biodiversity(Thomer et al 2016) and ecology(Lodato & DiSalvo 2015). Finally, one hackathon is in each of the following areas: mental health(Birbeck et al 2017), education(Artiles & Lande 2016), film and television(Karlsen & Løvlie 2017), aircraft design(Saravi et al 2018), diversity awareness(Safarova et al 2015), museum artefact design(Rey 2017), student life(Aryana et al 2019), greeting card reconceptualisation(Page et al 2016) and app development and financial innovation…”

Learning by doing? The relationship between effort, learning effect and product quality during hackathons of novice teams

“…Allocating sufficient time and resources to the solution phase can lead to higher product quality in student-based hackathons. Educators and team leaders should emphasize the importance of dedicating adequate time and effort to the solution phase, providing guidance on effective time management, design requirements and testing to maximize product quality impact (Aryana et al 2019). Furthermore, to support teams with limited initial knowledge, hackathon practitioners might consider presenting product development tools with a lower skill threshold to such teams (Boa et al 2017, Ranscombe et al 2020).…”

“…Consequently, while groups with low preexisting knowledge expend significantly more effort to surmount the skill threshold, it appears to yield positive results, enabling them to compete with their peers while learning. This phenomenon can be partially explained by Aryana, Naderi, & Balis (2019) and Flus & Hurst (2021a), who propose that familiarizing participants with the stages of a design process fosters 24/34 learning and encourages adherence to the process, leading to improved outcomes in hackathons.…”

Innovation in collaborative design: an exploratory study in hackathon

“…'The word hackathon is the combination of the words hack and marathon, where hack is used in the exploratory and investigative sense' (Briscoe & Mulligan, 2014). This type of event is now taking up more and more space in the ecosystem of innovation (Aryana et al, 2019;Perng et al, 2018). The hackathon is an event where experts, students, and enthusiasts meet over a short period, usually a few days, and in a single location to collaborate on an innovative project.…”