The Research Of Reflective Design Based On Group Ideation For Concept Generation Of Service Design

Selection of this paper is profoundly rooted in seven years of design teaching and project practice, principally aiming at two basic problems belonging to research field of design praxiology (design practice and design process):the first one is about basic design principles for designers at the stage of concept generation for service design. And the second one is about thinking mode, design strategies and driven styles of concept generation for service design.Concentrating on research problem and design field which contains basic properties of ill-defined problem and characteristics of synergistic evolution of design problems and solutions, we will utilize Donald A. Schon reflective practices of phenomenological constructivism as research theoretical foundations and incorporate the course of service design and business mode, combined design workshop of Motorola innovative service, Nokia joint programs as well as related workshops, service design workshop of Nokia mobile education and so forth. Meanwhile, we also exploit the methods of open coding, analytical induction and free lists deriving from literature research, oral analysis, lexical analysis, cognitive map, mind map and grounded theory.Primary contents of research are consisted of five chapters. The first chapter introduces this paper by the theory of "reflective practice", which defines not only concept and scope of this paper but also choices and key issues of the paradigmatic methodology. It summarizes the background and significance of paper’s selection and research literature such as design activities, design thinking, designers’cognition, and novices and experts as well. The second chapter takes group ideation as a basic unit of coding analysis for concept generation by the mean of oral analysis and concludes basic principles and distinguishing types of reflective activities for concept generation of service design through the way of introducing the frame of Donald Schon’s reflective practices combining with the achievements of literature research and depending on Dorst’s coding system that frames design problem as the core unit and Finke’s coding system of design activities. The third chapter mainly focuses extracting seven thinking modes of concept generation using cognitive map, mind map and divergent and convergent characteristics of deign through the linear process of concept generation by group and makes design analysis of multiple sections following the open coding rule of grounded theory and extracting design strategies and driven types of concept generation. The fourth concept concludes the differences of analyzing and processing design problems, design heuristic and strategies and design knowledge among diverse designers ranging from expert to novice. Additionally, we acquire the homogenous characteristics of group cooperation of designers by positive and concurrent relationships of qualitative lexical analysis and clarify the differences of interaction mechanism among all-level objects. The fifth chapter emphasizes proposing the research method of reflective activities based on group ideation for concept generation and concludes the characteristics of five levels of concept generation for reflective activities.Primary innovative achievements of research are listed as following:Firstly, we successfully draw conclusions of five-level characteristics of concept generation for service design by the qualitative and quantitative comprehensive analysis of concept generation for reflective activities, respectively from many aspects such as concept generation for reflective activities, thinking modes of reflective activities, design strategies, driven types and interaction mechanisms. Furthermore, we systematically refine three different kinds of concept generation for reflective activities and interaction mechanisms and perfectly conclude seven thinking modes of concept generation for service design such as the type of Petri dish, fission and funnel.Secondly, we make reflective discoveries and innovations based on experiments of concept generation and coding principles of oral analysis. Practically, we effectively dodge the drawbacks of capturing failure owing to thinking implication or experts’experience which commonly exists in oral analysis and efficiently provide the foundations of maintaining coding system and natural generation of result types by partially implementing experimental coding system with the principles of open coding, which is instructive to research of design activities under the guidelines of openness and infiniteness.Thirdly, we systematically analyse design behavior of concept generation of reflective activities and characteristic of cognitive levels, which points out significant elements of activities, thinking modes, design strategies, driven types and interaction mechanisms of reflective activities. Eventually, we propose the method of reflective design based on group ideation for concept generation of service design, which elaborates intrinsic characteristics of reflective activities separately from the aspects of concept generation of service designers and linear generation of concrete concept.