Coordinating role of six-hat thinking technique in design team during idea-generation phase of service design

• Published in: Thinking skills and creativity Vol. 39; p. 100764
• Main Authors: Hu, Ying, Yu, Wenyan, Ren, Zhenzhen, Du, Xing, Lan, Lan, Wang, Qin, Ji, Tie, Guo, Yinman
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2021
• Subjects: Creativity; Designing activity; Service design; Six thinking hats; Six thinking hats; Designing activity; Creativity; Service design
• ISSN: 1871-1871; 1878-0423
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100764

Design is a creative activity and service design is an emerging subject in design. While studies in other disciplines have analyzed the effectiveness of single thinking hats and proved the six-hat thinking technique to be beneficial for developing creativity, De Bono’s ‘six thinking hats’ are composed of six different thinking hats, representing different thinking directions respectively, this paper discusses how thinking set comprised of individual hats coordinates the designer’s designing activities. For that purpose, two studies are conducted. In order to explore the six-hat thinking spontaneously mobilized by expert designers during idea-generation phase of service design, the experts are designing in pairs. The first study, which is based on the “six thinking hats” model, codes the six hats, conducts naturalistic observation of eight expert designers in an interference-free environment, and analyzes their thinking through protocol analysis. The results indicate a certain degree of correlation between six-hat thinking that spontaneously mobilized by expert designers and designing activity in the idea-generation phase. The expert designers form thinking-hat sets during their team conversation that in a way coordinate the pace of design. A second study is conducted to further analyze the thinking-hat set’s coordinating role, and the results show that the effect of six-hat thinking is related with the timing of its engagement. It has a focusing and guiding effect when adopted in the early stage of design, and an effect on the updating, screening and iterating of the design plan when adopted in the middle stage of design. The conclusions of this study can be applied in service design education as it enriches the applications of six-hat thinking technique and can introduce it to the classroom in a more efficient and targeted manner in future design education, offering a new way to improve the students’ designing creativity.