Socio-technical Design Heuristics to Mediate Transdisciplinary Team Learning Activity

Abstract

This mixed-methods Design-Based Research (DBR) project addresses challenges in the growing field of hybrid teamwork by developing, refining and evaluating a collection of heuristic supports that target novice hybrid transdisciplinary teams. The heuristics emerged from the dual foundations of the study with transdisciplinary teamwork underpinning each of three design cycles, and a focus on mixed-reality theory established in our initial design constraints. Together, these perspectives informed the structure and evolution of the heuristic set. While the full collection of heuristics may benefit any team, specific supports for transdisciplinary synthesis and team mental model building are included to scaffold novice transdisciplinary teamwork challenges in particular. The aims of the study seek to address our first research question: RQ1. How might we design XR systems that support novice hybrid transdisciplinary teamwork? Our objectives address RQ1 via the following two sub-questions: RQ1a. What design heuristics can be used for such applications? RQ1b. How can the design heuristics be evaluated when implemented in a test artefact? Three categories of heuristic support were drawn from landmark teamwork literature, Distributed Cognition theory (DCog), and Distributed Cognition of Teams (DiCoT), with an additional category of user-centred heuristic supports being produced during our research, and which focus on novice hybrid transdisciplinary team onboarding and orientation. Our final design cycle instantiated the collection of heuristics within an exemplar software artefact called the Transdisciplinary Teamwork Tool (TTT), to evaluate them in a real-world novice hybrid transdisciplinary team learning context with students of the CHARM-EU M.Sc. in Global Challenges for Sustainability. The research adopts a social constructivist, socio-technical perspective, emphasizing meaning-making as a socially and cognitively distributed process that can be scaffolded with purposeful technology mediation via tools such as mixed reality. Data were produced over three design cycles and analysed by operationalizing Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) using the Activity-Oriented Design Method (AODM) to address CHAT's methodological challenges. AODM was enhanced with tools from the Change Laboratory toolkit to identify culturally historical third generation Activity Theory systemic contradictions in the evaluation of each heuristic. Findings confirm the utility of our heuristics as effective scaffolds for novice transdisciplinary synthesis within hybrid team learning contexts. The study also identified two heuristics focused team development that could not be fully tested but offer promising directions for future research. This work contributes theoretical insights and practical design heuristics for educators and software developers supporting transdisciplinary team learning in hybrid, distributed and immersive environments.