What is Co-exploration in Design Collaboration?

What is it about?

Exploration is central to the design process, as it fosters creativity and improves design outcomes. The authors ask how the exploratory nature of design manifests itself in collaborative settings, as contrasted with exploration by a single designer. They also want to understand the mechanisms that drive co-exploration. What is it? How does it work? What value does it bring to the design process? Their findings reveal how co-exploration emerges across diverse activities and team interactions, fostering togetherness and keeping design teams open-minded. This engagement cultivates collective intelligence and enables teams to share knowledge, build upon each other’s ideas, and achieve results that exceed individual contributions. They argue that co-exploration reflects the trajectory of design success and warrants further study.

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Photo by Marten Newhall on Unsplash

Photo by Marten Newhall on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In design, exploration is frequently linked to divergence, the intentional expansion of perspectives to generate more alternatives. In collaborative contexts, individual exploration extends into co-exploration, which is often assumed to mean simply more people contributing to a wider pool of possibilities. Our findings, however, reveal that while co-exploration includes divergence, it is not limited to it. These findings provide a grounded understanding of co-exploration and offer practical recommendations for fostering it in collaborative design. The patterns of co-exploration unfolded throughout the entire design process, challenging the traditional view of co-exploration as primarily divergent and highlighting it instead as a multifaceted, dynamic experience expressed through a variety of collaborative activities.

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