Factors for Creative Collaboration of Industrial Designers and Engineers : Utilizing Linkography and Entropy Measurement of Teamwork Sessions

Background To satisfy the customers’ emotional as well as material desires, industrial design requires collaborative activities with other areas of profession such as engineering, marketing and so on. The focus of this study is to investigate possible conditions to minimize the conflicting impacts so as to allow more creative collaborations in designer-engineer teamwork. Methods The study applied Goldschmidts’ Linkograghy with Shannon’s Entropy Theory to analyze the teamwork sessions of industrial designers and engineers, and to investigate possible conditions for creative collaborations. Total of five teamwork sessions were observed, recorded and transcribed afterwards. Each transcript was analyzed to draw the linkograph, to measure entropy and to carry out macro/microscopic observations and discussions of each session based on the measurements. Results As for the result of measurement, the values of Link Index(LI), Back Link(BL) Entropy, Forward Link(FL) Entropy, Horizon Link(HL) Entropy, and Total Entropy were calculated for each session. Critical Moves of each session were found based on LI, and analyzed and discussed how they relate and influence other moves and why. As one of the macroscopic results, session 5 has shown the highest entropy among five sessions taken to be the most creative session. It is interpreted that the existence of the leader in the team and intermediate and directional role of the leader influenced the team dynamics and creativity. Conclusion The study has shown that the creativity of designer and engineer teamwork enhances when they try to define and understand each others’ terminology, when they try to find solutions for colliding values, when they are composed of members with diverse lengths of work experience, and when there is a leader and her/his strong leadership which leads the team’s conflicting situation to be settled.