Abstract

Intercultural collaboration is one strategy for promoting inclusion and innovation in design education. Bringing two or more cultures together in an environment facilitates learning from each other’s varied perspectives and ultimately creates positive interpersonal gains and design outcomes. This study explicates how visual thinking can address unspoken stumbling blocks that can disrupt teamwork. These barriers include unconscious bias, stereotyping, and other deeply held beliefs. This research is based on observations and virtual classroom interactions with remote collaborators located in North America and the Gulf Arab Region. The findings suggest that ignoring the existence of unconscious bias can maintain social and cultural barriers between teammates, thus restricting the opportunities for innovative approaches to collaborative projects and stifling a team’s outcomes (Murdoch-Kitt & Emans, 2020). Conversely, establishing trust helps teams reach their full potential (Katzen-bach & Smith, 1993). This inclusive approach to design is important in giving voice to underrepresented groups by opening up opportunities for discussion, dialogue, and understanding amongst team members.

Keywords

collaboration, bias, equity, visual thinking, methods

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Conference Track

Research Paper

Share

COinS
 
Sep 24th, 9:00 AM

Improving intercultural collaboration with visual thinking

Intercultural collaboration is one strategy for promoting inclusion and innovation in design education. Bringing two or more cultures together in an environment facilitates learning from each other’s varied perspectives and ultimately creates positive interpersonal gains and design outcomes. This study explicates how visual thinking can address unspoken stumbling blocks that can disrupt teamwork. These barriers include unconscious bias, stereotyping, and other deeply held beliefs. This research is based on observations and virtual classroom interactions with remote collaborators located in North America and the Gulf Arab Region. The findings suggest that ignoring the existence of unconscious bias can maintain social and cultural barriers between teammates, thus restricting the opportunities for innovative approaches to collaborative projects and stifling a team’s outcomes (Murdoch-Kitt & Emans, 2020). Conversely, establishing trust helps teams reach their full potential (Katzen-bach & Smith, 1993). This inclusive approach to design is important in giving voice to underrepresented groups by opening up opportunities for discussion, dialogue, and understanding amongst team members.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.