Title: The effects of design integration mechanism on the maturity levels of a collaborative design team

Authors: Tung-Jung Sung; Chih-Shiang Wu

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Commercial Design, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, Taiwan. ' Department of Industrial and Commercial Design, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract: The front-end design process of product design has been a challenge for both academics and organisations. In order to facilitate the process, a mature integrated design team composed of different disciplines is often encouraged. Based on the concept of maturity level, this study first categorised the team maturity into four levels, such as initial, formative, managed, and optimising. Then, this study proposed four types of design integration mechanism (DIM) in the context of product design, which are 1) design interaction; 2) design collaboration; 3) design integrative tool; 4) design team reward. Furthermore, this study selected an intra-university collaborative design team as the subject of a case study. This study found that each type of DIM plays different roles in different maturity levels. Overall, design collaboration received the most importance at three of four levels, except for the initial level, while design team reward received the least importance at all of four levels.

Keywords: design integration mechanisms; DIM; maturity level; product design; team collaboration; collaborative design; design teams; design interaction; team rewards; intra-university collaboration; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2011.043804

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2011 Vol.9 No.4, pp.367 - 381

Published online: 21 Feb 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article