How Design Teams Have Been Affected by Remote Working Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Martin Schubert
Department of Management and Organisation Hanken School of Economics
Helsinki
2021
HANKEN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Department of:
Management and Organisation Type of work:
Master’s thesis Author and student number:
Martin Schubert, 153830 Date:
16.12.2021 Title of thesis:
How Design Teams Have Been Affected by Remote Working Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the whole world drastically. To reduce the transmission of the virus, many organizations have been forced to transition to a remote work setting. For employees working in fields that traditionally have heavily emphasized social interaction between people, this has presumably been a huge change. Design is one of these fields, as close teamwork between employees has been preferred in order to facilitate communication and creativity.
This thesis presents a case study about how design teams have been affected by remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, eight employees working in a design studio in Helsinki were interviewed. The aim of the interviews was to explore the respondents’ personal experiences of remote working, identify how the design teamwork has been affected, and find initial recommendations for how the work could be organized going forward. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interviews.
Most respondents had coped well with the remote setting, especially enjoying not having to commute to the office and the increased flexibility of the work. However, the respondents missed the social interactions with their colleagues and the office culture in general. The flow of information in the teams had not been negatively affected by the remote setting, which to some degree can be explained by the better organized ceremonies for communication and improved usage of digital tools. However, the lack of spontaneous social interactions negatively impacted interpersonal communication and reduced the spontaneous information exchanges among the team members.
Collective creativity had become more challenging, due to the virtual meetings making it more difficult for the participants to build upon each other’s ideas and perspectives during creative discussions. The remote setting also hindered moments for collective creativity to arise spontaneously. Client interactions had generally improved, as the design teams had started to collaborate more closely with their clients.
Once the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted, a hybrid work setting will likely be the most feasible option for the case company to accommodate for the different preferences of the employees. However, there are many potential difficulties with facilitating hybrid work practices in order to reap the benefits of both remote working as well as physical presence in the office. How to best organize this will likely be a key question for many organizations and management scholars in the near future.
Keywords:
COVID-19, Case Study, Design, Teamwork, Remote Working
SVENSKA HANDELSHÖGSKOLAN
Institution:
Företagsledning och organisation Arbetets art:
Magisteravhandling Författare och studerandenummer:
Martin Schubert, 153830 Datum:
16.12.2021 Avhandlingens rubrik:
Hur designteam har påverkats av distansarbete på grund av COVID-19-pandemin Sammandrag:
COVID-19-pandemin har påverkat hela världen drastiskt. För att minska virusets smittspridning har många organisationer övergått till distansarbete. Detta har sannolikt varit en mycket stor omställning för anställda som jobbar i branscher som traditionellt har betonat social interaktion mellan människor. Design är ett exempel på en sådan bransch, där lagarbete mellan anställda har föredragits för att underlätta kommunikation och kreativitet.
Detta magisterarbete presenterar en fallstudie på hur designteam har påverkats av distansarbete på grund av COVID-19-pandemin. I studien intervjuades åtta personer som var anställda på en designstudio i Helsingfors. Målet med intervjuerna var att utforska respondenternas personliga erfarenheter av distansarbetet, identifiera hur lagarbetet har påverkats samt finna preliminära rekommendationer för hur arbetet kunde organiseras i framtiden. Intervjuerna analyserades genom en tematisk analys.
De flesta av respondenterna hade klarat av distansarbetet relativt bra och i synnerhet uppskattat arbetets ökade flexibilitet, samt det minskade behovet av att pendla till kontoret. Däremot hade respondenterna saknat de sociala interaktionerna med sina kollegor och arbetskulturen på kontoret. Informationsflödet i designteamen hade inte negativt påverkats av distansarbetet, vilket delvis kan förklaras av bättre organiserade kommunikationsceremonier och en förbättrad användning av digitala redskap.
Däremot hade avsaknaden av spontana sociala interaktioner negativt påverkat den mellanmänskliga kommunikationen och minskat på det spontana informationsutbytet mellan kollegerna. Kollektiv kreativitet var också mera utmanande, eftersom de virtuella mötena försvårade deltagarnas möjligheter att bygga på varandras idéer och perspektiv under kreativa diskussioner. Distansarbetet minskade även på situationer där kollektiv kreativitet kunde uppstå spontant.
Interaktionen med klienterna hade däremot förbättrats, då designteamen hade börjat samarbeta tätare med dem.
Då de anställdas preferenser tas i beaktande verkar en hybridmall vara det bästa alternativet för fallföretaget, när restriktionerna på grund av COVID-19-pandemin upphör. Däremot finns det många potentiella svårigheter med att använda en hybridmall för att utnyttja fördelarna med både distansarbete såväl som fysisk närvaro på kontoret. Hur detta bör organiseras på bästa sätt kommer sannolikt att vara en nyckelfråga för många organisationer och forskare inom den närmaste framtiden.
Nyckelord:
COVID-19, Design, Distansarbete, Fallstudie, Lagarbete
CONTENTS
1 Introduction ... 1
1.1 Aim and research questions ... 2
1.2 Case description ... 3
1.3 Definitions ... 4
1.4 Structure of the thesis ... 4
2 Theoretical framework ... 6
2.1 The nature of design work ... 6
2.1.1 Definition ... 6
2.1.2 The design process and design mindset ... 7
2.1.3 Design problems and solutions ... 8
2.2 Design teamwork ... 10
2.2.1 Design as a social process ... 10
2.2.2 Shared understanding & knowledge sharing ... 11
2.2.3 Collective creativity ... 12
2.2.4 Generating solutions ... 13
2.2.5 Conflicts ... 13
2.3 Remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic ... 14
2.3.1 Background ... 14
2.3.2 Challenges ... 15
2.3.3 Factors influencing remote workers’ performance and well-being ... 18
2.4 Summary ... 19
3 Methods... 21
3.1 Research philosophy ... 21
3.2 Research approach ... 22
3.3 Data collection ... 23
3.4 Data analysis ... 24
3.4.1 Familiarising with the data ... 25
3.4.2 Generating initial codes ... 26
3.4.3 Searching for themes ... 26
3.4.4 Reviewing themes ... 26
3.4.5 Defining and naming themes ... 27
3.4.6 Producing the report ... 28
3.5 Trustworthiness of the study ... 28
3.6 Research ethics ... 29
4 Results... 31
4.1 Personal experiences of remote working ... 31
4.2 Changes in how the work is organized ... 33
4.3 Effects on team collaboration and creativity... 36
4.4 Effects on the workplace atmosphere ... 41
4.5 Opinions about the future of work ... 43
4.6 Summary ... 45
5 Discussion and conclusion ... 47
5.1 Discussion of the findings ... 47
5.1.1 The respondents’ personal experiences of remote working ... 47
5.1.2 Differences in the design teamwork due to the remote setting ... 49
5.1.3 Organizing the work of the design teams going forward ... 53
5.2 Limitations ... 54
5.3 Suggestions for future research ... 55
REFERENCES ... 57
APPENDICES Appendix 1 Interview guide ... 59
Appendix 2 Themes and codes ... 61
Appendix 3 Consent for personal data processing ... 63
FIGURES
Figure 1 Foundations of my theoretical framework ... 20
1 INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the whole world drastically. Due to the virus being a public health concern, countries all over the world have implemented various types of restrictions to reduce the transmission of the virus. Organizations have also been forced to implement restrictions, such as recommending or enforcing remote working, as employees being in the same physical space increases the risk of transmission of the COVID-19 virus. This has led to a worldwide explosion in the amount of people working remotely (Chakraborty and Maity, 2020). For example, between February and May 2020 over one third of the workforce in the USA transitioned to working remotely (Brynjolfsson et al., 2020).
Many employees, however, have never worked in a remote setting before. Remote working is also different in many ways compared to working in a physical office space.
For example, remote working is heavily dependent on online tools that enable virtual working. As an example of this, Zoom’s daily active user base grew with 67 percent in March 2020, and the number of daily active users of Microsoft Teams more than doubled from November 2019 to March 2020 (Leonardi, 2020). Remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic has thus been a huge change in the way of working for many employees all over the world.
Employees working in fields that traditionally have heavily emphasized the interaction between people, have presumably been more affected by remote working than employees working in fields where much of the work is done individually. One of the fields that typically have emphasized close teamwork between employees, is the field of design.
Close interaction between the members of the design teams has been preferred, in order to facilitate communication, ensure a common understanding of the design problem, and facilitate the generation of ideas and creativity in general. As this field of work presumably have experienced a big change, it is of interest to study how employees in the field of design have been affected by the remote working setting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this thesis, I have studied the effects of remote working on design teams by conducting a case study on designers working in a design studio in Helsinki. The case is described in further detail in section 1.2. In total, I conducted eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analysed them through a thematic analysis.
1.1 Aim and research questions
Previous research on design teamwork has focused on aspects such as communication and information sharing (Poltrock et al., 2003), team dynamics (Cross and Cross, 1995), the design process (Stempfle and Badke-Schaub, 2002), and creativity (Dorst and Cross, 2001) in design teams. Research on remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on aspects such as digital tools for virtual working (Leonardi, 2020), virtual collaboration (Waizenegger et al., 2020), and factors influencing employee well-being and performance (Wang et al., 2021).
Traditionally, design teams have emphasized tight interpersonal collaboration, and therefore their way of working has presumably been significantly affected by the remote setting. However, there is yet no published research about how remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work of design teams. I have therefore based my theoretical framework on two fields of research: literature from design journals about design teamwork and literature from management journals about remote working due to COVID-19. The aim of this thesis is to study how design teams have been affected by the remote setting due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how they may organize their work after the pandemic. I hope that this thesis will contribute to the theoretical knowledge about how to manage and organize design teamwork. Hopefully, my findings can be relevant also for other forms of creative teamwork.
In addition to the academic aim, I also have a practical aim with my study. As remote working is likely to be more common after the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to before, many organizations will have to find new ways of organizing their work. In order to do this, it will be necessary to have good insights into the main challenges and benefits of remote working. I hope that this thesis will serve as a source of information for organizations trying to find the best ways for organizing the work of their design teams in a remote or hybrid setting. At the very least, this thesis should be useful for the case company being studied.
The research questions answered in this thesis are:
1. How have the members of the design teams experienced remote working?
2. What are the biggest differences in the design teamwork due to working remotely?
3. How could the work of the design teams be organized after the pandemic?
With the first research question I want to acquire a deep insight into the experiences the respondents have had of remote working. The second research question aims at exploring what the main differences are in the way the design teams have worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of new challenges, benefits, and experiences. The third research question focuses on finding initial best practices for organizing the work going forward. Since some employees might want to continue at least partially remotely, while others might be eager to return to the office, I want to explore what kind of guidelines could be good to implement in order to accommodate for everyone’s preferences.
1.2 Case description
In this study, I am doing a case study of a design studio that is part of a multinational professional services company. The company operates primarily in the field of Information Technology, offering consulting services to its clients. As with many big companies, this one has several sub-divisions. The design studio I focused my study on is part of one of these sub-divisions and goes under a separate brand. The brand has several offices in different countries. In this study, I only focused on the Helsinki office.
The size of the Helsinki office is approximately 30 employees. The employees work primarily in the fields of business design, service & interaction design, visual design, and creative technology. A substantial part of the employees are not Finnish citizens. The work in the studio is heavily project based, as it is done for various clients. For each project, a new team working on that particular project is formed. As many of the respondents have worked on more than one project during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have also worked in more than one team during the same period. For the sake of anonymity for both the company as well as its employees, I will not use the name of the company in this thesis. Instead, I will refer to the company as “the case company”.
The office closed during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. During this time, all employees were required to work from home. After the summer 2020 the office opened again, with some restrictions. Only a certain number of people were allowed to be in the office space at the same time, and the employees had to send an application a week before coming to the office. Additionally, food and cutlery were removed from the kitchen. While some employees still have visited the office regularly, most of them have worked form home. For this reason, most of the work done by the respondents to this study have been remote work, as either they or their team members have been working from some other location than the office.
1.3 Definitions
Collective creativity: Collective creativity is creativity that arises due to the social interactions between people (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006).
COVID-19: A global pandemic that spread from China in late 2019. To limit the spread of the virus, restrictions and/or curfews were implemented in several countries. These actions lead to an explosion in remote working (Chakraborty and Maity, 2020).
Design: In this thesis, I use the definition of design by Buchanan (2001, p. 9), who stated that design is “the human power of conceiving, planning, and making products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and collective purposes”. In this definition, a product does not necessarily mean a physical product, but can instead be for example a process, concept, or a service.
Design teamwork: Design teamwork is design work that is done primarily in teams, instead of being done by an individual designer.
Interpersonal communication: Communication happening directly between two or more individuals, such as discussing or sending messages.
Remote working: I use the term remote working for work that is done at a distance to other colleagues. Remote working can therefore be done by both employees working from home, as well as employees in an office but whose colleagues are working from home.
Spontaneous information exchange: I use spontaneous information exchange as a term for describing information that employees acquire by spontaneously interacting with their colleagues, like overhearing a discussion in the office or bumping into someone at the coffee machine.
Virtual work: Virtual work means work that is done virtually, facilitated by various digital tools. A big part of remote work is done virtually and is therefore also virtual work.
1.4 Structure of the thesis
In the first chapter, I give an overview of the thesis, as well as a short introduction to the topic and the case company being studied. The chapter also includes a description of concepts and terminology used in this thesis.
In the second chapter, I present the theoretical framework used in this thesis. I cover previous peer-reviewed academic literature about topics central to this thesis. The topics covered include the nature of design, design teamwork, and remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the third chapter, I discuss the methodology used in my study. I discuss my research philosophy, research approach and choice of methods for data collection and data analysis. I also assess the trustworthiness of my study.
In the fourth chapter, I present the findings of my study. I review the themes found in the thematic analysis and describe the content of the themes thoroughly.
In the fifth chapter, I discuss my research questions in relation to the findings from the study. I discuss conclusions that can be made, possible explanations for them as well as things I found surprising. I also compare the findings to the literature presented in Chapter 2 and reflect upon similarities and differences.
2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This chapter will present an overview of the academic literature relevant to this thesis.
The topic in this thesis relates to two different fields of research: design teamwork from the field of design studies, and remote working from the field of management studies.
For this reason, I will in this chapter present previous research from both fields. This chapter has three main sections. In the first section, I give an overview of the nature of design work and the design process. In the second section, I narrow down my focus and present previous research about design teamwork. In both of these sections the literature is primarily from design journals. In the third section, I cover the research in management journals that has focused on remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
2.1 The nature of design work
In this section I will present previous academic literature about the nature of design work, including a definition of design, an overview of the design process and design mindset, as well as the nature of design problems and solutions.
2.1.1 Definition
Design is a concept for which many scholars have tried to propose a definition. However, there is still no definition that is commonly agreed upon within the scientific community (Ralph and Wand, 2009). Instead, there are many ways of categorizing what design is and what it is not. Buchanan (2001) stated that one of the great strengths of design is that no single definition has been settled upon. This way, the academic field of design research can continue evolving, instead of becoming stale and rigid.
Buchanan (2001), however, still proposed his own formal definition of design. According to the author, design is “the human power of conceiving, planning, and making products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and collective purposes” (Buchanan, 2001, p. 9). In this definition, product does not necessarily mean a physical product. Instead, a product can also be for example a process, a concept, or a service.
Buchanan (2001) further elaborated on the nature of design. According to him, there are four orders of design. The first order focuses on symbols like words and images, while the second order focuses on tangible things. Common professions in these orders are graphic design, visual design, and industrial design. The third order of design focuses on
actions, like how humans interact with each other through the products being designed.
An example profession in this field is interaction design. The fourth order of design focuses on environments and systems, which influence the experience of humans. I assume that professions like service design or business design can be seen as professions within this order of design. This means, that the different design professions of the respondents in my study each fit into one of the four orders of design described by Buchanan (2001).
2.1.2 The design process and design mindset
One might intuitively think that various professions operating within the four orders of design are inherently different. However, Lawson (2006) stated that there are many similarities in the design process in different professions of design. Instead of seeing design as a specific field of work, the author argued that design instead is a way of thinking and approaching problems. Therefore, design should not be classified based on the end-product, but rather seen as a process and mindset through which solutions to complex problems are formed. This means that design can be seen as a generic activity with different end products.
Following the arguments by Lawson (2006), one can thus study design work in one profession, and assume that the conclusions are applicable also to other fields of design.
For this reason, I have in my study interviewed respondents from different professions of design, as I consider design to be a generic activity resulting in various outcomes, following a process and mindset with many similarities between different fields of design.
The findings by Poltrock et al. (2003) also support this premise. In their study, the authors found that design teams with different products, disciplinary backgrounds, and tools still had striking similarities in both the kinds of information they needed to solve their design problems as well as the methods they used for finding it. Michlewski (2008) also had a similar view to design work. According to the author, designers tend to have a certain mindset, or attitude, towards their work and how they tackle problems.
According to Michlewski (2008), designers approach a problem from many different perspectives and typically need to consider many internal and external requirements.
The design mindset embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, instead of following a pre- determined way of working and tackling challenges. In addition to coming up with ideas, Michlewski (2008) argues that designers often have to also manifest the ideas and
bringing them to life. This can, for example, be done through visualizations or prototypes. Finally, the author also states that the design mentality includes a human- centred mindset, that emphasizes empathy and an understanding of the people who are the target audience of the design project.
The concept of design thinking further shows that design can be seen as a mindset and approach for solving problems. According to Dorst (2011), design thinking is a concept that uses the design approach to solve problems in other fields, ranging from business and IT to education and medicine. The author argued that what distinguishes the design approach, is the abductive mindset tackling complex problems with limited information through framing and reframing the problem, in order to create suitable solutions.
The content of the design process and the design work can also be described in different ways. According to Cross and Cross (1995), the key elements in design are planning, information gathering, problem analysis and concept generation. Schön (2017) highlighted the importance of reflection in the design process, describing design as a reflective conversation. According to the author, constantly reflecting on the design problem and the work being done is crucial in order for the design practitioner to find the best way forward.
2.1.3 Design problems and solutions
According to Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002), design is a specific area of problem solving. However, in contrast to other problem-solving activities, the problems in design are often vague and ill-defined (Cross and Cross, 1995). Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) stated that by exploring the design task, and thereby widening the problem space, the complexity of the design problem increases. Designers thus generally work with very complex problems.
Due to the complex and ill-defined nature of design problems, a significant time of the designers’ work goes to exploring and understanding the problem being tackled (Cross and Cross, 1995). This statement is further supported by Valkenburg and Dorst (1998), who in their study of two design teams found that the team that first focused on exploring the design task outperformed the team that almost immediately started to look for a solution to it. With other words, the more time that was spent on defining and understanding the problem, the better the team managed to achieve a creative result.
Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) noted that also the solution space in design usually is quite large. This means that there is not only one single solution to the design problem, but instead there are many solutions, each with its own trade-off between advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, design offers many opportunities for creative thinking, while still placing several constraints that the designers must take into account. Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) argued that in order to reduce complexity, humans tend to strive for satisficing solutions instead of optimum solutions. This means that with a large solution space, designer rarely search for the optimal solution, but instead try to create a solution that solves the design problem well enough.
According to Dorst and Cross (2001), defining and framing the design problem is an essential aspect of creative design. This can be explained by the co-evolution of the problem and solution spaces. This co-evolution happens when developing a solution leads to redefining the problem, which in turn leads to a further refined solution, which leads to further redefining the problem, etc. The problem space and the solution space thus co-evolve together, with continuous interchange of information between the two spaces.
Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) emphasized the importance of analysing possible solutions before they are accepted or rejected. There are two main reasons for this. First, there is a risk of prematurely rejecting good solutions that do not immediately fit the constraints of the design problem. Often, the problem can be redefined, or the solution modified in a way that makes it viable. Second, if a solution is accepted too quickly, it might prove to be problematic later. Due to the complex nature of design problems, there are often too many constraints for the designer to remember at once. Therefore, a crucial constrain might be forgotten. In this case, a considerable amount of time might be spent on developing a solution that in the end does not work for the design problem.
Creativity is often regarded as an important aspect of design, that can be found in every design project (Dorst and Cross, 2001). Good design often includes novel elements and new ideas, or at least new perspectives to tackle the problem being solved. Sometimes creativity can happen during a “creative leap”, a significant event where a significant creative insight is formed. In other cases, creativity can be seen in the gradual evolution of a unique solution to the design problem. While pursuing new ideas that rise up, practitioners of design might often deviate from planned activities in an opportunistic behaviour (Cross and Cross, 1995). This means that the design process does not always follow a pre-determined path. The creativity in design, however, does not only depend
on the understanding of the design problem, but also on other factors such as the design situation, the resources available and the designer’s own goals (Dorst and Cross, 2001).
2.2 Design teamwork
In this section, I will present previous academic literature about design teamwork. This includes information and knowledge sharing, collective creativity, solution generation and sources for conflicts in design teams.
2.2.1 Design as a social process
There are some crucial differences between the work of a design team as opposed to the work of an individual designer. Valkenburg and Dorst (1998) noted that in a design team, the members support each other in answering questions that arise and by building upon each other’s thoughts and ideas. A team working like this would thus have an advantage over individual designers. However, the authors also noted that in the collaboration between several designers there are also several new difficulties. These difficulties lie primarily in synchronising the thoughts and activities of the team members, so that misunderstandings and uncoordinated actions are avoided.
Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) found that in contrast to individual designers, design teams can not only focus on the design task itself, but must also focus on structuring and organising the teamwork. The authors distinguish between two main focuses of action, that they label content and process. The main steps under the content focused actions are goal clarification, solution generation, analysis of proposed solutions, evaluation of the solutions and decision for or against a solution idea. For the actions focused on the process, the authors defined five steps: planning of the work, analysis of the group process, evaluation of the group process, decisions concerning the process and control of group members’ work. The two focuses of action thus share similar elements.
Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) stated that the design process in teams happens through a constant interweaving of sequences focused on the content of the design task and sequences focused on the group process.
Valkenburg and Dorst (1998), described the design process for teams as being based on four activities: naming, framing, moving and reflecting. Naming is when a design team explicitly looks for relevant objects in the design task. Framing is when the team frames a (sub)problem or a partial solution for further exploration. The frame then becomes the context, or scope, for further activities in the design process. Moving happens when
experimental actions happen within a frame. This can for example be generating ideas, sorting information, or combining and comparing ideas and concepts. Finally, reflection happens when practitioners reflect upon earlier activities in order to know what to do next. This is a crucial part of the design work because it allows the team to reflect on their behaviour and progress, in order to start new activities.
2.2.2 Shared understanding & knowledge sharing
It is common in design that the problem given is not as clear and apparent as in many other problem solving contexts (Cross and Cross, 1995). Instead, the problems are often ill-defined and ambiguous. Therefore, a big portion of the designers’ work is related to exploring and understanding the problem being solved. While an individual designer can form his own understanding of a problem, a team must reach a shared understanding of the problem they are trying to solve.
There are different ways for a design team to explore the problem they are working on.
Cross and Cross (1995) described listing the external requirements for the solution and discussing them as a way for the team to create a shared understanding. Another way is by trying to frame the problem. The aim of framing is to create an internalized conceptualization of the problem. For example, one designer can make a drawing of how he understands the problem, which then can be discussed in the team.
General communication can also be a struggle in design teamwork. Cross and Cross (1995) found that there easily can be misconceptions of concepts that the team members thought they understood the same way. For example, team members relying on personal knowledge, like previous experience, instead of public and formalized knowledge sources, can lead to misunderstandings (Cross and Cross, 1995). Also concepts that the team members thought that they shared can later turn out to have been misunderstood.
Therefore, a shared understanding can never be assumed in collaborative design work.
Both for understanding the problem, as well as for ideating and validating potential solutions, a crucial part of a design team’s work is finding and sharing relevant information (Poltrock et al., 2003). Organising this collaborative information retrieval so that all members of the team take part of the information gathered, is vital for the team’s success. In order to get this information, there is often a need to contact people outside of the design team. In their study, Poltrock et al. (2003) found that designers often prefer communicating with external stakeholders in person, instead of sending emails or messages. Personal communication helps building relationships with people,
which enables the designers to also interpret the emotional parts of the information, in addition to the factual parts.
2.2.3 Collective creativity
Creativity is often regarded as an important aspect of design, that can be found in every design project (Dorst and Cross, 2001). However, creativity does not only happen inside the mind of an individual. Hargadon and Bechky (2006) refers to creativity that arises due to the social interactions between people as collective creativity. When people interact with one another, they can rely on different experiences, knowledge, and perspectives to analyse a problem in different ways and come up with new solutions. The social interactions thereby trigger new interpretations and discoveries that an individual would not have achieved on his own. These interactions can happen in formal ways, such as brainstorming sessions, mut more often happen in an ad hoc fashion, like hallway discussions.
Hargadon and Bechky (2006) found four sets of activities that play a role in triggering moments of collective creativity. These are help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing. Help seeking happens when a person asks for assistance to a challenging problem. While involving other people in the work, the person thereby gains different perspectives and knowledge to solve the challenge. Help giving represents the willing devotion of one’s time to help others with their challenges. This is necessary for help seeking to result in collaboration between people. Reflective reframing is when people through social interaction make sense of what they already know. For example, involving others can lead to them not only considering the question at hand, but also pondering on whether there is a better question to ask in the first place.
The fourth set of activities identified by Hargadon and Bechky (2006) is related to reinforcing activities that support individuals as they engage in help seeking, help giving, and reflective reframing. Actions that trigger collective creativity can often be constrained or undermined in organizations, thereby inhibiting problem solvers from tapping into each other’s experiences and knowledge. Reinforcing actions are therefore critical for enabling those moments when collective creativity emerges. For example, help seeking might be hindered by the idea that it signals ignorance or incompetence (Ashford, Blatt and VandeWalle, 2003). Therefore, a culture that encourages that kind of social interaction helps enable moments of collective creativity. According to Hargadon and Bechky (2006), hierarchical organizations can inhibit help seeking for the
same reason. Help giving can be hindered when managers and experts consider themselves too busy to have time for others’ challenges, leading to help being sought from people with more time at hand but who often might be less experienced and knowledgeable. For organizations that want to facilitate collective creativity, it is therefore essential to encourage social interactions that result in help seeking, help giving and reflective reframing.
According to Elsbach and Flynn (2013), creative workers tend to be more open to idea- giving behaviour than idea-taking behaviour. In their study, they found that incorporating other’s ideas into their work threatened the personal identities of the designers. Therefore, the authors suggested to emphasize idea-taking behaviour in organizations, especially incorporating others’ ideas, in order to promote creative collaboration.
2.2.4 Generating solutions
Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) described two main processes in which design teams approach potential solutions. In the first process, a solution is quickly either accepted or discarded. This saves time and cognitive effort, but risks discarding ideas that would have been good after further analysis. In the second process, solutions are analysed thoroughly before they are accepted or rejected. This approach takes more time and effort but yields better results, especially in complex design problems. The authors argued that design teams naturally tend to employ the first process but might transition to the second process given certain conditions.
One of these conditions is lack of common understanding. In heterogenous groups, the members have different levels of understanding, and a proposed solution will not be understood by everyone right away. This leads to questioning the solution, which forces the team to further analyse the solution before it is accepted. Stempfle and Badke-Schaub (2002) argued that this mechanism could be one reason why heterogenous teams tend to outperform homogenous teams in complex problem-solving tasks.
2.2.5 Conflicts
Since team members might have different opinions both on what the problem is, as well as how to solve it, there will naturally be conflicts within a design team. Therefore, identifying, avoiding, and resolving conflicts is an inevitable part of design teamwork (Cross and Cross, 1995). Disagreement can, however, also provoke analysis of the design
problem or a proposed solution, as the team members try to find arguments to back up their standpoint (Stempfle and Badke-Schaub, 2002). This analysis, in turn, can lead to an improved outcome of the design work.
Emotional factors can also be a source for conflicts. Elsbach and Flynn (2013) found that while designers tend to be willing to offer ideas to others, they are often not as open to incorporating other’s ideas into their own work. Instead, this can make them feel that their personal identities are threatened, which in turn might lead to the designers resisting to engage in creative collaboration. Cross and Cross (1995) stated that when ideating a solution, it is common for designers to become very committed to a particular concept, sometimes even emotionally attached to the concept. This can lead to the designers feeling a need to persuade the other team members into accepting the concept.
2.3 Remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic
In this section, I will present previous academic research about remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes an overview of the situation, challenges that employees experience, and factors that affect the employees’ well-being and productivity.
2.3.1 Background
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic remote work has become much more common, as many organizations have been forced to close their offices or at least provide the opportunity for their employees to work from home. For example, between February and May 2020, over one third of the workforce in the USA transitioned to working remotely (Brynjolfsson et al., 2020). Remote working is heavily dependent on online tools that enable virtual working. For example, Zoom’s daily active user base grew with 67 percent in March 2020, and the number of daily active users of Microsoft Teams more than doubled from November 2019 to March 2020 (Leonardi, 2020).
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations had to make decisions regarding both how to keep employees safe in the workplace, as well as how to transition other employees to a remote work context. Nyberg, Shaw and Zhu (2021) stated that the pandemic forced organizations to make changes to practices and processes affecting the employee experience that are likely to have long lasting ramifications. Some of these changes might have happened eventually, however, due to the pandemic the changes have happened much faster than they otherwise would have.
While there is academic literature about remote working, Waizenegger et al. (2020) noted that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic is very different from the context in previous literature about remote working. During the pandemic, remote working has largely been mandatory, instead of a voluntary decision. Many employees have never worked remotely before and may not even have had a desire to do so. Before the pandemic, employees may have been working remotely in order to have less distractions, more autonomy and more flexibility for travelling and taking part in social engagement. During the pandemic, however, employees now often work together with other members of their household, without the ability to travel or engage in social activities due to restrictions.
Due to the context being so different during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is possible that previous literature about remote working says more about the type of people who chose to work remotely, than it tells about remote working in general (Wang et al., 2021).
Before the pandemic, most people working remotely voluntarily did so, which means that previous research about remote work has focused on people who either due to their life situation or personality preferred to work remotely.
Waizenegger et al. (2020) further noted that the lack of opportunities for physical activity and social interactions outside the household has negatively affected the wellbeing of employees. In addition, the uncertainty and other concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic has put additional emotional stress on many people. From the organizations’ point of view, the restrictions and curfews happening relatively fast has not allowed for much preparation and planning for a situation where most employees work remotely.
Previously, only a small part of the workforce in an organization typically worked remotely. As the overall context of remote working has become so different due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Waizenegger et al. (2020) stated that the benefits of remote working found in previous research might not hold true for employees working remotely due to the pandemic.
2.3.2 Challenges
One big challenge with working in a remote setting, is that communication becomes harder (Nyberg, Shaw and Zhu, 2021). For example, Waizenegger et al. (2020) noted that in a remote setting, colleagues do not spontaneously bump into each other and talk about personal or work related things the same way as they do in a physical office. This lack of ad hoc meetings impedes knowledge sharing and coordination among the
employees. Especially for new employees this can be problematic. New employees often have many questions to ask and can normally tap a colleague on the shoulder and quickly get the answer needed. While working from home, on the other hand, the newcomer must send a message every time there is a question. This easily gives a feeling of bothering colleagues and can lead to fewer questions asked, which in turn makes the onboarding process harder.
Waizenegger et al. (2020) also found that virtual meetings can feel overwhelming for many employees, and thus lead to more fatigue than physical meetings. Employees that feel exhausted by the virtual communication may be less willing to communicate with their colleagues outside of the scheduled meetings, which in turn can result in lower overall communication and coordination. As many employees feel that their calendars are packed with virtual meetings, calling a colleague outside of that can just feel like too much. Many employees also perceive online communication as less efficient than face- to-face communication, therefore leading to a cost in time (Wang et al., 2021).
There are also some benefits with virtual communication. Since social gatherings are now done virtually instead of physically, employees can more easily get to know and interact with colleagues from other departments, or even offices in other countries (Waizenegger et al., 2020). In addition, the employees who previously worked remotely might experience more connection to their colleagues now that everyone works from home and the social gatherings are also happening virtually. However, it is still hard to facilitate a virtual group discussion with several people talking at the same time, and an after-work setting where people mingle from group to group is also challenging to create virtually.
Another challenge with remote working, is increased procrastination (Wang et al., 2021).
While procrastination is common also in the physical office, it is enhanced for many employees when working from home. Wang et al. (2021) found that while many employees were committed to being as productive as usual, they were struggling with self-discipline. For example, employees were delaying working on their core tasks by spending time on social media or taking long breaks.
Wang et al. (2021) found that many people struggle with interference between work and home. For example, while working from home there are more interruptions from family, or other people in the household. Especially for parents, whos’ children might be home due to school lockdowns, this can be challenging. But working from home does not only
affect work; work also affect being at home. Due to the digital technology that enable remote working, many people feel like they are always online, and must be able to respond quickly to colleagues and supervisors. This can hurt people’s ability to meet family obligations. Due to the digital tools used for remote working, the work-life boundary has been blurred (Waizenegger et al., 2020). While the positive ide of this is the increased flexibility of work, it can also lead to increased stress for employees, and the feeling of never being able to fully relax from work.
As the work-life boundary becomes increasingly blurred, with employees being almost constantly online, also time for reflexive thinking reduces. According to Järvenpää and Välikangas (2020), this reduction in what they call inner time can make organizations less creative, as reflective thinking is crucial for creativity. Additionally, the dependence on digital tools decreases “quality” social time. For these two reasons, the authors warned for that an increase in reliance on virtual technology can negatively impact collective creativity.
Working remotely, in addition to restrictions on non-essential social contact due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees experience increased loneliness (Wang et al., 2021). Even though it is possible to connect to colleagues through various communication tools, those discussions are often more task focused. As the social interactions that naturally occur in the workplace to a big part have disappeared, there is an increased feeling of a lack of belongingness and relatedness due to working remotely among many employees.
A challenge for organizations during the pandemic, is that employees face very different challenges (Waizenegger et al., 2020). For example, people who live alone experience a lack of social interaction, whereas parents might experience a conflict between their role as an employee versus their role as a parent. Therefore, it can be hard for an organization to find the right policies to alleviate challenges in remote working. In addition, once the restrictions are lifted some employees might wish to continue working remotely, whereas others might want to return to the workplace (Nyberg, Shaw and Zhu, 2021).
Organizations therefore need to find ways to adequately accommodate for the different preferences among their employees. Maintaining the desired culture can also be a challenge for organizations. Usually, managers spend much time enforcing the company values, vision, and mission, but getting the message through virtually is significantly harder.
2.3.3 Factors influencing remote workers’ performance and well-being According to Wang et al. (2021), the nature of the job an employee does affects how well the employee works in a remote setting, both in terms of productivity and well-being.
For example, both a high workload and extensive monitoring can negatively impact the ability for the employees to tend to their home responsibilities. Monitoring can for example include clocking in and out via applications, daily reports, being required to have the camera on while working or daily morning meetings. While managers might believe that implementing monitoring activities will reduce procrastination among employees and thus increase their productivity, Wang et al. (2021) did not find such a correlation in their study. Therefore, the authors argue that monitoring negatively impacts employee well-being, and being costly to implement, monitoring might be a counterproductive practice.
In their study, Wang et al. (2021) found that social support is another characteristic that affects how well employees managed to cope with remote working. Social support was important for example in overcoming loneliness and reducing interference between home and work. For example, employees working for organizations that provide online platforms facilitating social interactions between colleagues were less likely to report loneliness as an issue. The authors propose that employees who get social support from the organizations they work for will be more committed to their organization, as well as coping better with interference between work and home. Reduced procrastination also seemed to be linked to increased social support. The authors speculated that a reason for this might be that procrastination sometimes is a way of getting relief from stress, and social support is an important factor for coping with stress, especially considering the overall negative context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wang et al. (2021) argued, that job autonomy has in previous remote working literature been considered helpful for reducing work-home interference. Job autonomy means that an employee can decide when and how to accomplish his tasks, and therefore helps with balancing the work-life tension. The authors, however, found no such correlation in their study. However, they suggested that job autonomy might make people more proactive, and that proactive behaviour is essential for engaging in social interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, since much of the spontaneous interaction does not happen remotely. Therefore, job autonomy might indirectly reduce loneliness.
Personal traits can also affect how well a person does when working remotely. According to Wang et al. (2021), one powerful individual factor is self-discipline. Self-discipline can for example reduce procrastination and benefit work-family balance, since people with higher self-discipline are better at self-regulation. The authors also found that social support is more likely to help employees with low self-discipline to overcome procrastination. Ironically, disciplined workers tend to be better at seeking out the social support they need. The reason for this is that social interactions in a remote work setting do not happen in the same spontaneous manner as in the office, and therefore employees must actively engage in them.
2.4 Summary
There are many different ways of looking at design in the academic literature. However, there are still some things that seem to be commonly agreed upon amongst scholars. For example, design is commonly seen as a way of approaching a problem and a way of thinking, rather than a specific field of work that creates a pre-determined type of output (e.g., Lawson, 2006). Seeing design as a problem-solving activity is another commonly accepted perspective. However, design problems are often complex and ill-defined, and therefore require the design practitioners to invest significant amounts of time to fully understand the problems (Cross and Cross, 1995). Finally, there seems to be an agreement on that there is a lot of room for creativity in the design work, due to the large solution space in design problems.
While design is sometimes done by an individual designer, it can also be done in teams.
In this theoretical framework, I see design teamwork as a sub-topic of the broader field of design. The benefits of doing design work in teams, is that the practitioners can build upon each other’s ideas and utilize a broader base of knowledge and experience than what an individual person is able to. However, working in teams also brings challenges such as misunderstandings and uncoordinated actions. Therefore, the design teams can not only focus on the content of the design work, but must also focus on managing the design process as a team (Stempfle and Badke-Schaub, 2002). Some important aspects for the design teams to keep in mind, is to emphasize good communication, synchronise activities and create good conditions for collective creativity to occur.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a massive increase in remote working in many countries (Chakraborty and Maity, 2020). For many employees, suddenly working remotely is a big difference compared to their previous way of working. Some struggle
for example with work-home interference, loneliness, or procrastination, while others enjoy the increased flexibility of working and not having to commute to work. However, when employees are suddenly not in the same physical space, there are many ways in which the work may be impacted. For example, there are much fewer spontaneous, ad- hoc encounters and discussions, which are important for both communication and creativity (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006; Nyberg, Shaw and Zhu, 2021). As communication and creativity are both cornerstones for design teamwork, this is one of many ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a big change to the field of design teamwork.
Figure 1 explains how I see the topics covered in this chapter relate to each other, as well as to the topic of this thesis. As my topic relates to two very different fields of research, I have chosen to base my theoretical framework on literature from both management journals as well as design journals. In Figure 1, I have visualized how I see remote working as being a sub-topic of management, while design teamwork is a sub-topic of design. These topics combine into the overall topic of this thesis; “the effects of remote working on design teams”.
Figure 1 Foundations of my theoretical framework
3 METHODS
In this chapter the methodological process of my thesis will be presented. I will first describe my research philosophy and research approach. Then I will go through my choices for data collection methods, after which the process for data analysis will be presented. For each section, I will present the logic behind my methodological choices.
Finally, I will assess the quality and trustworthiness of my empirical study.
3.1 Research philosophy
The research philosophy a researcher has can have a great influence on the research that is carried out. Patton (2015, p. 89) defined research philosophy as “a way of thinking about and making sense of the complexities of the real world". The research philosophy therefore influences the researcher through the assumptions the researcher has about the real world. These assumptions include ontological assumptions (assumptions about the nature of reality), epistemological assumptions (assumptions about human knowledge) and axiological assumptions (the extent in which the researchers values influences the research process) (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016).
This study is based on an interpretivist perspective. According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2016), interpretivists argue that humans are very different from physical phenomena, and therefore social sciences must take on a different research approach compared to natural sciences. As opposed to physical objects, human beings create meanings, and it is these meanings that the interpretivists study. With its focus on multiple interpretations and the complexity and richness of reality, interpretivism is explicitly subjectivist. The researcher does not aim to find objective answers to the research questions, but rather studies the respondents’ subjective perspectives of their own reality. Therefore, it is crucial for the interpretivist researcher to be empathetic and try to enter the social world of the research participants and see things from their point of view.
There are different ways to gather insights into the complex realities of the research participants (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2016). Phenomenologists place emphasis on experience; how the participants experience things and events and how they interpret those experiences. Hermeneuticists place their focus on the study of cultural artefacts, such as text, images, stories, and symbols. Symbolic interactionists see meaning as something that arises from the social interaction between people. They therefore focus on studying conversations, meetings, and teamwork.
Studying the effects of remote working on design teamwork could be done in many different ways. In this study, I have used an interpretivist perspective, as I wanted to understand the in-depth perspectives of the research participants and how they have interpreted their reality. As I wanted to focus on the lived experiences of the participants, i.e., how they have felt, thought and in general experienced their work during the COVID- 19 pandemic, I am closer to the phenomenologist strand of interpretivism. Just like interpretivists generally do, I have done my best to adopt an empathetic stance, trying to see the world from the research participants points of view.
3.2 Research approach
In the interpretivist perspective, there are no absolute, objectively true answers to the research questions. For this reason, I find qualitative methods as being the most appropriate for the study done in this thesis. The aim of qualitative research, is to understand a topic or a situation from the respondents’ point of view (Corbin and Strauss, 2014). This is exactly what I want to accomplish when studying the effects of remote working due to COVID-19 on design teams.
This study is done with a case study research approach. Simons (2009) described case study research as an in-depth exploration of a specific case, where the researcher tries to explore it from multiple perspectives. A case is always unique, and the aim is to study this uniqueness thoroughly in a “real-life” context. The goal of case study research is to acquire an in-depth understanding of the case, in order to either generate knowledge in general, or to inform for example policy development or professional practice.
Stake (1995) identified three different types of case studies. The first one is an intrinsic case study. In this type of study, the interest lies in understanding more about the specific case itself. In contrast, an instrumental case study is a study that is done in order to learn more about a certain topic in general or to answer a particular question. The third type is the collective case study, where several cases are explored in order to answer a general question. In this thesis, the topic being studied is the effects of remote working on design teams due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the case being studied is explored in order to answer this question, the study is an instrumental case study.
The case study in this thesis is done with an inductive approach. According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2016), an inductive approach is when a theory is formed after data is collected, as opposed to a deductive approach where the research is done in order to test an already existing theory. An inductive approach works well in social sciences, due
to its ability to form a thorough understanding about how humans interpret their social world.
Since there is little prior research about design teamwork during the COVID-19 pandemic, I chose to go with an inductive approach for generating theory. I wanted to get a thorough understanding of the experiences of the research participants and use those insights to formulate conclusions that might provide a ground for further research.
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2016) stated that induction is used for generalising from the specific to the general. Since I in this thesis do a case study (the specific), an inductive approach is beneficial also for the generalisability of the findings.
3.3 Data collection
The data in this study will be collected through conducting semi-structured, in-depth interviews. This type of interview is the most common interview format in qualitative research (DiCicco-Bloom and Crabtree, 2006). The in-depth nature of the interviews allows for gaining a deeper understanding of the respondents’ perspectives. The interviews being semi-structured means that there are pre-determined questions, however, the questions are formulated in an open-ended way. This way, further questions can arise, allowing the researcher to explore more broadly the respondents’
thoughts. The goal is to create a dialogue, or discussion, between the researcher and the interviewee. As there still are some pre-determined questions, the interviewer can make sure that certain important topics are covered.
In this study, I was interested in exploring the experiences of the research participants having participated in the work of design teams in a virtual and remote context due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I considered in-depth interviews to be the most fitting method for collecting data, since they allow me to gain a deep understanding of the experiences and perspectives of the interviewees. I conducted the interviews in a semi-structured way, as open-ended questions allowed me to also get information that I might not have thought about asking specifically for. For these reasons I also concluded that semi- structured, in-depth interviews suited well the inductive nature of my study.
In total, I conducted 8 semi-structured, in-depth interviews. All interviews were conducted in English and lasted between 45 and 75 minutes. The interviews were conducted virtually through teams and were recorded for the data analysis. The respondents were informed about the topic of the interviews before the interviews started. I informed them about the topic because I wanted the respondents to have gone
through some thought process before I asked my questions, as I thought this would result in richer answers.
There were three main topics covered in the interviews. First, I asked about the respondents’ personal experiences with working remotely, like what challenges they have experienced and what the benefits have been. Second, I asked questions related to how the design teamwork has been affected, for example in terms of communication, creativity, and group dynamics. Finally, I asked about how they thought remote working could be done in a better way and how they would like to continue working once the restrictions are lifted. The interview guide can be found in Appendix 1.
I chose the sample in a way that gave me a diverse mix of respondents. The respondents were working within different fields of design, including business design, service design, interaction design, visual design, and creative technology. While all respondents were working in the same unit within the company, I still considered factors such as positions within the company and how long they had been working in that particular unit. Four of the respondents were male and four were female. The respondents were also of different ages. Some of the respondents had been visiting the office occasionally while others had been working from home since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, all of them had done most of their work virtually during the pandemic.
3.4 Data analysis
In this study, I did a thematic analysis on the data collected through the interviews.
According to Braun and Clarke (2006), thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns, or themes, within data. It is widely used for analysing qualitative data, with the goal of finding themes and patterns across the entire dataset.
The authors argue that the themes can be found in one of two primary ways: inductively or deductively. In the inductive way, the data is coded without trying to fit it into a pre- existing theoretical framework. Conversely, finding the themes deductively means that the analysis is driven by the researcher’s interest in a particular area. This way, the thematic analysis gives a less rich description of the data overall, but a more detailed description of some parts of the data.
I chose to conduct a thematic analysis on the data, since I was interested in discovering what types of experiences the research participants had had participating in design teamwork remotely. The nature of my study is inductive, and therefore I wanted to see what themes would arise from the data while doing the analysis. In order to do achieve
this, I searched for themes in an inductive way without trying to fit them into an existing framework, as described by Braun and Clarke (2006).
In my thematic analysis, I used the process presented by Braun and Clarke (2006). Their process for thematic analysis includes the following steps:
1. Familiarising with the data 2. Generating initial codes 3. Searching for themes 4. Reviewing themes
5. Defining and naming themes 6. Producing the report
I will present these six steps in further detail and describe what each step looked like in practice for me when conducting the analysis.
3.4.1 Familiarising with the data
Braun and Clarke (2006) strongly recommended for the researcher to become familiar with the data prior to the analysis. This makes it easier for the researcher to find appropriate codes. The authors also argued that verbal data (e.g., from interviews) needs to be transcribed before a thematic analysis can be conducted. Braun and Clarke (2006) considered the transcription to be a key part for the researcher to become familiar with the data.
As I had conducted all the interviews myself, I was already quite familiar with the data.
To save some time, I used a software called Otter.ai for transcribing the data. The software produced decent quality transcriptions, but I still needed to ensure that the transcribed text was completely correct. Therefore, I listened through the recording of each interview and corrected the automatic transcriptions. This way, I further familiarized myself with the data, while saving some time from the tedious transcription work.
