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This article aims to expand our knowledge on interdisciplinary design education by focusing on team development, which has remained a less explored aspect of interdisciplinary collaboration so far. An interdisciplinary design studio course, Collaborative Design, for food engineering and industrial design students in higher education provides the research context. The empirical basis of the paper comes from interviews with students on their experiences of interdisciplinary collaboration in the course, and the educator's observation notes. Drawing on these data, this article critically reflects on how and to what extent the teaching materials, methods and strategies incorporated into the course design guided and supported students' transition through the four stages of becoming a performing interdisciplinary team. The article concludes with four suggestions for design educators. First, encountering new ways of thinking, talking and doing that make sense for both disciplines engages students in interdisciplinary collaboration. Second, humour and positive social relations play an important role in team success in all stages of team development. Third, using the first weeks of the course to reveal the disciplinary differences and potential issues that would lead to conflicts through class discussions and warm-up activities facilitates a smooth transition from forming to norming. Fourth, adequate representation of each discipline should be ensured both in the design problem and solution, and among the tutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on examining elementary pupils' (N = 42, 11–13 years old) reflections on collaborative design processes, team collaboration and their co-inventions. Digital and traditional fabrication technologies were used in a 2-year co-invention project containing approximately 16 sessions during year 1 and 11 sessions in year 2. Between the two project periods, the pupils were asked to write a structured essay about their co-invention and design process, and in year 2 they kept journal notes in each team's design-folder. Each pupil's structured essay was analyzed with qualitative content analysis that focused on three main aspects: (1) description of the co-invention, (2) progress of the co-invention process and (3) quality of collaboration. Based on the essay analysis, we constructed a "Co-invention Table" with five categories: user, conceptual design, technical design, appearance, and construction. The nature of the 13 pupil-teams' co-inventions varied greatly, and these co-inventions were divided according to three main functions: (1) improving cleanliness, (2) providing reminders or (3) addressing well-being. The essays provided information on how creative ideas were generated and how critical thinking and evaluation of ideas were crucial in improving ideas for further development. The collaboration was dependent on everyone's active and equal participation into work and the importance of an adequate division of the labor was highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]