By Kelly Murdoch-Kitt & Dr. Denielle Emans

Introduction

Design for belonging has been the foundational value of our research, teaching, and creative practice since our collaboration began in 2011. Long intrigued by the intersection of design, education, and culture, we launched a study of remote intercultural design teams that continues to the present. Our research focuses on Collaborative Online Intercultural Learning (COIL), specifically in Intercultural Design Collaboration (IDC). Based on the belief that systemic challenges require multi-perspective ideas, we bring students together through IDC to collaborate on sustainability topics and related wicked problems. Like design practice itself, IDC is project-based and provides an experiential learning opportunity for students to explore themselves and their cultures through teamwork and design. 

Our study reveals that international collaboration on global challenges positively affects student engagement in these topics. Bringing different perspectives together for more creative problem-solving helps students compare how various issues manifest in different parts of the world and enables them to connect with challenges beyond their own cities. Students learn to build trust, belonging, and collaborative outcomes as they exchange ideas, conflicting views, and dissenting opinions. Alongside these highlights, of course, are plenty of opportunities for cringe moments. 

Our book: Intercultural Collaboration by Design

As an innovative approach to COIL, we create and utilize visual thinking and collaborative design methods within intercultural learning environments, which is detailed in our book, Intercultural Collaboration by Design, published in 2020 (Figure 1). Our ongoing study has engaged over 400 participants from 24 countries and seven different academic institutions. The visual thinking methods we describe in Intercultural Collaboration by Design have been implemented by k–12 and university-level educators across a wide range of disciplines (including biology, performing arts, urban planning, mathematics, physical education, English Language Arts, engineering, and others). 

A survey of design practitioners and educators initially informed our research. Like us, these early survey respondents believed that intercultural learning was essential to the future of creative practice. The subsequent study evolved to include developing, testing, and refining activities to connect and encourage collaboration between our distant design classrooms. At the start of our study, we were teaching in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and San Francisco, United States of America. Just your basic 11 to 12-hour time difference—and before the widespread use of videoconferencing or virtual whiteboards.

We continue to pursue our research in supporting intercultural collaboration as an integral part of our teaching at our respective universities and as co-principal investigators of our research group, ORBIT Labs. The interdisciplinary and multigenerational team of student researchers we supervise through ORBIT Labs (Figure 2) pursue a variety of projects related to bridging differences as a pathway toward social change. (Incidentally, ORBIT stands for Online Resources for Building Intercultural Teams.)

Getting comfortable with the awkwardness of collaboration across cultures

Our approach to teaching intercultural collaboration is about learning to “design for awkwardness.” Helping designers-in-training to give visual form and expression to the awkwardness of teamwork enables them to approach collaboration with more acceptance and work with “friction.” Scholars of innovation, organizational studies, and collaborative practices agree that this friction, sometimes called creative abrasion, is ultimately positive because of its potential to create unique new outcomes. Thus, learning to surface, discuss, and work through differences is an asset to creative practice and a starting point for addressing complex challenges such as the climate crisis. 

However, as humans, we tend to minimize our differences and seek commonalities to avoid conflict. Why incur the wrath of another living organism who could prove to be a threat? While seeking commonality is a natural survival instinct, it cannot help us address the larger threats we face today, such as climate change and social ills. We must learn how to work together with our differences to ensure the survival of all living things. To achieve this, we must also develop conscientious and regenerative creative practices that challenge the historically capitalist orientation of the design industry. Design scholar and futurist Tony Fry refers to this evolution of conscientious design as redirective practice.

Of course, this all sounds very romantic: “Let’s bring students from different countries and cultures together using remote tools and teach them to design a way out of our climate crisis!” However, in reality, it is thoroughly messy work. The self-consciousness of a typical, co-located classroom is magnified exponentially when students from different schools, countries, languages, and cultures are thrown together and asked to collaborate. Teams struggle to find a starting point, whether with each other, the design process, or a given problem. Moreover, friction is inevitable when combining disparate personalities, backgrounds, working styles, and life experiences. This inevitability can be intimidating, if not debilitating. To address these challenges, we have developed the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork (Figure 3).

The six dimensions as a structure to build belonging

Through our study, we developed a theory that intentional visual thinking activities created for exchange enhance intercultural teamwork. We present our theory through a framework called the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork. The Six Dimensions evolved from primary and secondary research on intercultural remote teams and the recurrent pain points in their teaming and collaboration processes. In addition to their benefits for teambuilding and design outcomes, implementing our visual thinking activities often boosts students’ curiosity, critical thinking, and engagement in cohorts of COIL students—compared to cohorts who did not utilize the activities. 

Contemplate: Discover Work Styles

The first phase of the Six Dimensions invites students to start small, focusing on themselves first as a prerequisite for becoming truly receptive and able to learn about others (Figure 4). This concept draws from Marcia B. Baxter Magolda’s constructive-developmental theory, which posits that self-understanding is a first step in understanding the world. Activities in this dimension help build self-awareness while cultivating community with peers in the same institution/geographic location. There are also reminders throughout this dimension that the collaborative experience is a shared journey of discovery.

Relate: Understand Core Beliefs, Establish Trust

From here, the following two dimensions help teams to scale up slowly as participants learn to understand core beliefs and establish trust (Figure 5). We don’t expect collaborative projects to happen immediately; instilling confidence and engagement must come first. These dimensions are thus focused on parallel activities across international classrooms to encourage community-building, sharing, and—ultimately—belonging. 

At these early stages, participants are not designing for the project yet—they are designing to understand themselves and each other better. They are designing the team dynamic and learning to work together before the project begins. Teamwork is the project within the project.

Investigate: Assess Information, Decode Communication Styles

The processes embedded in dimensions four and five help students come together and find a sense of belonging in exploring a shared topic (Figure 6). The activities in these dimensions encourage deeper sharing, content exchange, feedback exchange, and a focus on interpersonal skills. Teams typically begin to identify possible shared topics or problems within these phases. Activities that explicitly address teammates’ skills, ambitions, and orientation toward different types of goal-setting help move them into the phase of creative action. 

Create: Design Shared Goals

Design Shared Goals is the final phase of the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork (Figure 7). Here, focusing on a shared concern, such as our earlier example of the climate crisis, is the basis for project-based learning. Collaborative projects bring people together and motivate them to share their different perspectives on the problem or ideas to resolve it. Also, it can be rewarding and fun!  

Belonging and difference in teamwork

The Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork build up to a “design phase,” but design is truly present throughout the entire process. It is the mediator between worlds and helps teammates build the necessary bridges that make it possible to develop a project together. In a sense, there are two projects at hand in a COIL course: the design project as an outcome AND the project of building the team—or belongingness—by establishing trust, exchanging ideas, cultivating cultural appreciation, and growing mutual respect. 

Design as a shared language

Because our human tendency is to first hunt for similarities, design can provide some common ground before veering into the more challenging territory of difference. Readers with a background in visual communication are probably familiar with the adage that design makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Leaning into this idea helps intercultural teammates understand how their unique perspectives can be perceived as both familiar and strange, depending on the context. In turn, they more easily overcome the initial awkwardness embedded in differences or socio-cultural barriers because of design’s ability to communicate and elicit diverse perspectives. 

In addition to the shared lexicon of design, we encourage teams to create and exchange boundary objects—to inform conversation and topics for discussion. According to Arias and Fischer (2000), boundary objects can be physical objects that generate shared understanding across diverse teams and disciplinary boundaries. Instead of centering discussions on the individual or their so-called difference, the object becomes the center of attention. In other words, design becomes the starting point for discussion, reducing the awkwardness of a typical video call focal point: strangers’ facial expressions in digital rectangles. 

Belonging in the world

Focusing on belonging is vital to this ongoing research because it simultaneously underlies and propels responsible and conscientious ethnography, participatory and action research methods, and practice-based studies. Cultivating belongingness in creative practice is particularly essential for teams to channel their diverse perspectives into innovative approaches to build community. Even when differences arise, design helps create a shared language that unites our participants and enables them to discuss and value differences. Students gain the confidence to reveal not only what they have in common but also what makes them different from each other. 

In the bigger picture of creative practice for global challenges, the Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork and the skills we teach in IDC are transferable beyond the classroom. Collaboration, teamwork, and their synonyms are intertwined with the practice of 21st-century design. We see the inevitability of teamwork as a design problem that can be addressed by intentionally and slowly building relationships. Finding the courage to bring our differences to the table enriches the learning experience and our potential to push beyond our boundaries or typical approaches. 

As designers, we must find ways to proactively diversify the discipline because transformative social change requires multiple perspectives, ideas, and people. Only together can we begin to resolve the world’s most pressing challenges. And in taking responsibility for these problems together, we cultivate a greater sense of belonging in our shared world.