Teams are a major feature of engineering and are commonly thought to be necessary when solving dynamic and complex problems. Even though teams collectively provide a diversity of knowledge, skills, and perspectives to problem-solving, previous work has demonstrated that in certain scenarios, such as in language-based and more spatially oriented configuration design problems, the production by a team is inferior to that of a similar number of individuals working independently (i.e., nominal team). This research explores this comparison of individual versus group problem-solving within the domain of conceptual engineering design. Thus, a behavioral study was run with freshman engineering students, who solved a conceptual engineering design problem individually or collaboratively in a team. Results corroborate previous findings, exhibiting that individuals outperform teams in the overall quality of their design solutions, even within this more free-flowing and explorative setting of conceptual design. Exploiting this result, this work further considers whether adaptive feedback from a process manager can lessen the underperformance of collaborative design teams compared to individuals, by helping teams overcome potential deterrents that may be contributing to their inferior performance. Teams that are under the guidance of a process manager end up performing better than teams that are not in terms of solution quality, and almost as well as individuals, though not significantly different. This result suggests that process managers are able to mitigate some of the deficiencies in design teams. In an attempt to uncover some of the cognitive rationale and strategies that may be beneficial throughout problem-solving, the managerial interactions with the design teams are then investigated. Furthermore, to determine the reason of the collaborative teams’ underperformance, the effect of verbalization is studied as a possible cognitive hindrance. In the end, this work expands growing research on team problem-solving in engineering, and suggests that collaborative teams may not be optimal in every circumstance, but under the proper process management, can become substantially more effective.

中文翻译：

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你一个人过得更好吗？通过自适应过程管理减轻工程团队在概念设计过程中的表现不佳

团队是工程的一个主要特征，通常被认为在解决动态和复杂的问题时是必要的。尽管团队共同提供了解决问题的知识、技能和视角的多样性，但先前的工作表明，在某些场景中，例如在基于语言和更面向空间的配置设计问题中，团队的生产不如类似数量的独立工作人员（即名义团队）。本研究探讨了概念工程设计领域内个人与团队解决问题的这种比较。因此，对工程大一新生进行了行为研究，他们单独或在团队中协作解决了概念工程设计问题。结果证实了先前的发现，展示个人在设计解决方案的整体质量方面优于团队，即使在概念设计的这种更自由流动和探索性的环境中也是如此。利用这一结果，这项工作进一步考虑了来自流程经理的自适应反馈是否可以通过帮助团队克服可能导致他们表现不佳的潜在威慑来减轻协作设计团队与个人相比的表现不佳。在流程经理指导下的团队最终比没有解决方案质量的团队表现得更好，并且几乎与个人一样好，尽管没有显着差异。这一结果表明流程经理能够减轻设计团队中的一些缺陷。为了揭示在整个问题解决过程中可能有益的一些认知原理和策略，然后调查与设计团队的管理互动。此外，为了确定协作团队表现不佳的原因，将语言表达的影响作为可能的认知障碍进行研究。最后，这项工作扩展了对工程中团队解决问题的日益增长的研究，并表明协作团队可能不是在所有情况下都是最佳的，但在适当的流程管理下，可以变得更加有效。语言的影响被研究为一种可能的认知障碍。最后，这项工作扩展了对工程中团队解决问题的日益增长的研究，并表明协作团队可能不是在所有情况下都是最佳的，但在适当的流程管理下，可以变得更加有效。语言表达的影响被研究为一种可能的认知障碍。最后，这项工作扩展了对工程中团队解决问题的日益增长的研究，并表明协作团队可能不是在所有情况下都是最佳的，但在适当的流程管理下，可以变得更加有效。