With the growing popularity of Design Thinking and the widespread use of it in contexts with non-designers, the role of the design facilitator is in increasing demand. This warrants investigation into skills needed and tools available for the facilitator to use when guiding non-designers through design processes. Existing research has highlighted shared practices between Design Thinking and Improvisational Theater (Improv). However, the benefits Improv can provide to design facilitators has not yet been addressed. Through three qualitative studies, the aim of this research is to investigate how practitioners are leveraging or might leverage their Improv experience in their current practice of facilitating design processes. The results of the studies show that design facilitators may use Improv to support them in 1) reading the room, being flexible, having a tolerance for ambiguity/uncertainty, 2) guiding non-designers through design processes through fostering self-learning and 3) extracting design tools out of the principles of Improv. Additionally, the research conceptualizes the role of the design facilitator and highlights success factors for successfully facilitating design.

随着设计思维的日益流行以及在非设计者的背景下广泛使用它，设计促进者的作用正在不断增长。这有必要对引导非设计师完成设计流程时需要的技能进行调查，并为促进者使用可用的工具进行调查。现有研究突出了设计思维与即兴剧场（Improv）之间的共享实践。但是，Improv可以为设计促进者提供的好处尚未得到解决。通过三项定性研究，本研究的目的是调查从业人员在当前促进设计过程的实践中如何利用或利用他们的Improv经验。研究结果表明，设计协助者可以通过Improv为他们提供支持：1）阅读房间，保持灵活性，具有不确定性/不确定性的容忍度； 2）通过促进自我学习来指导非设计师完成设计过程，以及3）从Improv原则中提取设计工具。此外，该研究概念化了设计促进者的角色，并强调了成功促进设计的成功因素。