Impact of team communication on co-design teamwork in distributed intercultural teams

In the recent decades, as the development of global industry and economy, design management is making disruptive changes according to mass customization and globalization, in line with the change of business model and consumer behavior. The demands from consumers and the supplies of production are increasingly global distributed, thus leading to the experience of intercultural impact on both consumers and designers. It is transformed accordingly not only the way of product and service design but also the role of designers. As the tendency of disruption and innovation, design management and strategy transformed for the creation of value and meaning. On one side, the innovation of communication technologies makes it possible for distributed intercultural product creation and development, on the other side, the effectiveness and efficiency of team communication for information has impact on distributed intercultural design teamwork. This paper is designed to investigate the impact of team communication in distributed intercultural design teams and explore the communication issues and design challenges for distributed intercultural design teamwork. Three different design teamwork modes (cooperation, collaboration, competition) are introduced to investigate the impact of team communication and improve the process and result of design teamwork. To achieve the research objective, the research questions are: how different design teamwork modes affect team communication in distributed intercultural design teams? What are communication issues and design challenges for distributed intercultural design teamwork? This research conducts a distributed intercultural design course and related co-creation workshop with design students from China and the Netherlands as a case study, working in different design teamwork modes and interacting with different communication tools during the design teamwork. In the case study, design teams take on the design case of design for health and make use of different ways of communication for different design teamwork modes. In the context of cultural and geographical difference, interview observation and diary reflection are used for research data collection and related analysis. This study analyzes the strength and weakness of different communication tools in distributed intercultural design teams, so as to interpret the advantage and disadvantage of different design teamwork modes for distributed intercultural design teamwork. In the distributed intercultural design teams, team communication is important but difficulty for design teamwork, and team composition with cultural difference also has impact on distributed intercultural design teamwork. In order to improve distributed intercultural design teamwork, it is necessary for designers to be aware of cultural difference and make use of communication tools for all the design teamwork modes. As a result, different aspects of communication issues in distributed intercultural design teams are stated and discussed as design challenges for distributed intercultural design teamwork. Based on the discussion and related results of the case study, this research shows the importance and relative difficulty of distributed team communication and intercultural teamwork, in order to help designers facilitate team communication and improve design teamwork in distributed intercultural teams