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The Future of Design Education working group on Community Engagement describes the active involvement of students and faculty with community groups as important co-design and participatory research opportunities that shift the designer’s role from expert to facilitator. The working group offers overarching principles for designer behavior when working in communities and recommendations for the management of community-based student projects. The goal of engagement is to share knowledge and power, building toward autonomous decision-making about the community’s future. A matrix ''A Spectrum of Community Engagement in Design Education'' illustrates a continuum of participation to explain the types of work in which students, faculty, and researchers might engage. A discussion of assessment both acknowledges challenges that are different from the typical individual studio projects and offers insights from other service sectors for a broader review of engagement program success. Short descriptions of cases illustrate key concepts.

This research explores innovation‐readiness in the context of design‐led innovation in micro, small and medium‐sized enterprises (MSMEs). It builds on work undertaken and published by the lead author's team in 2018. This reported on the team's rapid design‐led intervention for supporting organisations to establish innovation readiness. Since it first delivery, the approach has been deployed with over 60 separate enterprises across three different countries; UK, USA, and Armenia. It has evolved to be delivered through different modes; one‐to‐one, one‐to‐many, face‐to‐face and on‐line. Further, it has been developed in such a way that postgraduate students, or 'novice facilitators', can take an active role in its delivery. Facilitation teams have invariably included at least one facilitator with a design background. Participants were enterprise founders or leaders. In this study a mixed‐methods approach is used, combining thematic analysis of participant surveys, co‐reflection and semi‐structured interviews with participants and facilitators. Findings suggest that this design‐led approach delivers different benefits from typical business innovation readiness assessment and audit tools. It involves a form of co‐creative, speculative knowledge venturing that supports enterprises in not only understanding their innovation readiness, but also in creating and mapping strategic innovation opportunities, thereby priming them to engage in design‐led innovation practices. This co‐creation of knowledge leads to both new knowledge about the innovation readiness of the enterprise and new innovation opportunities. It is revealed as a fundamental, catalytic aspect of the programme irrespective of mode, or location, of delivery. This paper will be of interest to researchers and practitioners who are seeking to develop innovation support programmes working with SMEs and MSMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitation style appears to be an important determinant of design team effectiveness. The neutrality of the group facilitator may be a key factor; however, the characteristics and impact of neutrality are relatively understudied. In a designed classroom setting, we examine the impact of two different approaches to group facilitation: (i) facilitator's neutrality expressed as low equidistance and high impartiality and (ii) facilitator's neutrality expressed as high equidistance and low impartiality, on team trust, trust to the facilitator and team potency. To do this, we conducted a repeated-measures experiment with a student sample. Our results indicate that facilitators expressing neutrality through low equidistance and high impartiality had a greater positive impact on team trust. The two approaches did not differ on team potency and facilitator trust. These results contribute to developing theories of design facilitation and team effectiveness by suggesting how facilitation may shape team trust and potency in group design. Based on our findings, we point to the need for future work to further examine the impact of facilitator's process awareness and neutrality, and show how facilitation methods may benefit teams during creative design teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitation style appears to be an important determinant of design team effectiveness. The neutrality of the group facilitator may be a key factor; however, the characteristics and impact of neutrality are relatively understudied. In a designed classroom setting, we examine the impact of two different approaches to group facilitation: (i) facilitator’s neutrality expressed as low equidistance and high impartiality and (ii) facilitator’s neutrality expressed as high equidistance and low impartiality, on team trust, trust to the facilitator and team potency. To do this, we conducted a repeated-measures experiment with a student sample. Our results indicate that facilitators expressing neutrality through low equidistance and high impartiality had a greater positive impact on team trust. The two approaches did not differ on team potency and facilitator trust. These results contribute to developing theories of design facilitation and team effectiveness by suggesting how facilitation may shape team trust and potency in group design. Based on our findings, we point to the need for future work to further examine the impact of facilitator’s process awareness and neutrality, and show how facilitation methods may benefit teams during creative design teamwork.

Design thinking – as a problem-solving approach – has been taught in informal and formal education settings across various disciplines globally (within both academia and industry), yet little research has focused on what level of design expertise facilitators require to educate non-design students. This paper analyses two informal immersive learning experience case studies from Australia and the Netherlands to explore the role of the facilitator in the teaching of design thinking to non-designers. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the level of design expertise of the facilitator, as well as the complexity of the problem being addressed and how these impact the value of the learning experience of design thinking for a non-design audience. Fifteen (15) student group projects were observed across the two international case studies i) Brisbane, Australia ( Morehen, Wright, & Wrigley, 2013 ) and ii) Utrecht, The Netherlands ( Dijksterhuis, 2016 ) with some variances of learning experiences as well as some notable similarities. The results show in addition to design expertise levels, problem complexity impacts the facilitation of informal design thinking workshops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the process, methods, and outcomes of a project that included multiple stakeholders in a participatory design process to re-design an indispensable service in the healthcare sector. The project explores how visual designers are taking on new roles as design researchers and design facilitators and what a human-centered design approach might look like within the healthcare sector of emergency management. Design methods included collaboratively visualizing the complexity of an existing context, including content development, production processes, distribution processes, issues, and perceptions; using generative tools to examine and discuss content, use, form, and function; prototyping toolkits to visually model processes, themes, devices, and technological capabilities; and evaluative surveying to collect and assess user feedback. The outcome of this project includes a completely redesigned product and service that has increased user subscription and satisfaction, as well as suggestions for future implications and improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper presents the first systematic, critical literature review on design facilitation. • We present emergent conceptualisations and ten key constructs that characterise current design facilitation practice. • Design facilitation is presented as an interdependent, dynamic practice which is influenced by both the design facilitator's personal characteristics and behaviours, and the shared characteristics of joint activity and the environment. • The review highlights under explored constructs of design facilitation and suggests future areas of investigation to develop and build the field. The rise of design thinking as a new approach to innovation has challenged what is traditionally considered design practice, diversifying what professional designers do and how they work. As the evolution of design practice has expanded so too have the activities and skillsets of trained designers. Drawing on and applying design thinking approaches in participatory and co-design contexts, particularly design workshops with participants requires 'design facilitation'. However, design facilitation is a contested and indistinct practice within the field of design; its nature and characteristics remain under conceptualised and poorly defined. Through combining a systematic, critical review of literature on 'design facilitation' this study examines 102 publications to identify the emergent conceptualisations and ten key constructs from the data that characterise current design facilitation practice. The paper presents design facilitation as an interdependent, dynamic practice influenced by both the design facilitator's personal characteristics and behaviours, and the shared characteristics of joint activity and the environment. Through this review, the paper seeks to clarify design facilitation through presenting an integrative and holistic perspective of design facilitation practice on which future theory and practice can build upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Exploring how Improvisational Theater can be used by design facilitators in processes with non-designers. • Investigates how design facilitators currently use Improvisational Theatre in their practice. • Contributes to conceptualizing the role of the design facilitator. With the growing popularity of Design Thinking and the widespread use of it in contexts with non-designers, the role of the design facilitator is in increasing demand. This warrants investigation into skills needed and tools available for the facilitator to use when guiding non-designers through design processes. Existing research has highlighted shared practices between Design Thinking and Improvisational Theater (Improv). However, the benefits Improv can provide to design facilitators has not yet been addressed. Through three qualitative studies, the aim of this research is to investigate how practitioners are leveraging or might leverage their Improv experience in their current practice of facilitating design processes. The results of the studies show that design facilitators may use Improv to support them in 1) reading the room, being flexible, having a tolerance for ambiguity/uncertainty, 2) guiding non-designers through design processes through fostering self-learning and 3) extracting design tools out of the principles of Improv. Additionally, the research conceptualizes the role of the design facilitator and highlights success factors for successfully facilitating design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designers increasingly find themselves facilitating large-scale design events. Yet few have explored design facilitation as an emerging practice. This article examines the design facilitation practices used in two Norwegian case studies of multi-stakeholder events. We focus on the contextually designed tools designers create to help them facilitate. We then explore some critical dimensions of design facilitation. When used as visual overlays, facilitators’ explicit knowledge of these dimensions can improve their capacity to analyze, evaluate, and plan how to design and use contextual tools during design events. By plotting how designers use facilitation tools sequentially during events, we render the flow of design facilitation practice visible and accessible. We suggest that an explicit awareness of these dimensions and flows can enable designers to build more inclusive and inspiring tools, orchestrate the flow of long-term participatory processes more deliberately, and better equip participants to work with complex systemic change.

In this paper we discuss our experiences of facilitating collaborative creative activities within healthcare. The study consists of a larger case study on innovation scouting with the staff at the emergency room backed up by a series of seven retrospective mini-case studies. By means of discussing our experiences we identify some insights and challenges. Challenges for design facilitators working in this domain relate to: 1) dealing with the clash of professional eco-systems, the informal designers’ way of working with the formal and procedural healthcare operations; 2) Positioning yourself ‘at the right table’ in order to find backing for concepts; and, 3) steering the intertwined processes of developing strategic direction and concrete products and services on the floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]