A Topic Modeling Approach to Study the Impact of Manager Interventions on Design Team Cognition

Author(s):  
Joshua T. Gyory ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky ◽  
Jonathan Cagan

Abstract In order to computationally study design cognition under design process management, this work utilizes a topic modeling approach to analyze design team discourse during problem-solving. The particular experimental design, from previous work by the authors, places one of the design team conditions under the guidance of a human process manager. In that work, teams under this guidance outperformed the unmanaged teams in terms of their design solutions. This opens the opportunity to not only model design discourse during problem solving, but also explore the impact of process manager interventions and their impact on design cognition. Utilizing this approach, a topic model is trained on discourse of human designers, for both managed and unmanaged teams, collaboratively solving a design problem. Results show that the two team conditions significantly differ in a number of the extracted topics, and in particular, those topics that most pertain to the manager interventions. Furthermore, a before and after analysis of the topic-motivated interventions, reveals that the process manager interventions significantly shift the topic mixture of the team members’ discourse toward that of the interventions immediately after they are provided. Together, these results not only corroborate the effect of the process manager interventions on design team discourse and cognition, but provide promise in the computational detection and facilitation of design interventions based on real-time discourse data.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Joshua Gyory ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky ◽  
Jonathan Cagan

Abstract Computationally studying team discourse can provide valuable, real-time insights into the state of design teams and design cognition during problem-solving. The particular experimental design, adopted from previous work by the authors, places one of the design team conditions under the guidance of a human process manager. In that work, teams under this process management outperformed the unmanaged teams in terms of their design performance. This opens the opportunity to not only model design discourse during problem solving, but more critically, to explore process manager interventions and their impact on design cognition. Utilizing this experimental framework, a topic model is trained on the discourse of human designers of both managed and unmanaged teams collaboratively solving a conceptual engineering design task. Results show that the two team conditions significantly differ in a number of the extracted topics, and in particular, those topics that most pertain to the manager interventions. A dynamic look during the design process reveals that the largest differences between the managed and unmanaged teams occur during the latter half of problem-solving. Furthermore, a before and after analysis of the topic-motivated interventions reveals that the process manager interventions significantly shift the topic mixture of the team members’ discourse immediately after intervening. Taken together, these results from this work not only corroborate the effect of the process manager interventions on design team discourse and cognition but provide promise for the computational detection and facilitation of design interventions based on real-time, discourse data.


Author(s):  
Jiawei Chen ◽  
Yinghui (Catherine) Yang ◽  
Hongyan Liu

In recent years, more and more platforms where both buyers and sellers can write reviews for each other have emerged. These bilateral reviews are important information sources in the decision-making process of both buyers and sellers. In this study, we develop a comprehensive relational topic modeling approach to analyze bilateral reviews for better online transaction prediction. The prediction results will enable the platform to increase the chance that the buyer and seller reach a transaction by presenting buyers with offerings that are more likely to lead to a transaction. Within the framework of the relational topic model, we embed a topic structure with both shared and corpus-specific topics to better handle text corpora generated from different sources. Our model facilitates the extraction of the appropriate topic structure from different document collections that helps enhance the transaction prediction performance. Comprehensive experiments conducted on real-world data sets collected from sharing economy platforms demonstrate that our new model significantly outperforms other alternatives. The robust results obtained from multiple sets of comparisons demonstrate the value of bilateral reviews if they are processed properly. Our approach can be applied to many platforms where bilateral reviews are available.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaolong Sun ◽  
Fuxin Jiang ◽  
Gengzhong Feng ◽  
Shouyang Wang ◽  
Chengyuan Zhang

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide better service to hotel customers during the COVID-19 era. Specifically, this study focuses on understanding the changes in hotel customer satisfaction during the epidemic and formulating effective marketing strategies to satisfy and attract guests. Design/methodology/approach As the first victim of the COVID-19 virus, China’s hotel industry has been profoundly affected and customer satisfaction and needs have also changed. Taking 105,635 hotel reviews obtained from Tripadvisor.com in Beijing and Shanghai as samples, this study explores the changes in consumer satisfaction by using text-mining methods. Findings The results suggest that there are significant differences in overall ratings, spatial distribution and ratings of different traveller types before and after the epidemic. Generally, customers have higher “tolerance” and are more inclined to give higher ratings and pay more attention to hotel prevention and control measures to reduce health risks after the COVID-19. Research limitations/implications This paper proves the changes in customer satisfaction before and after the COVID-19 at the theoretical level and reveals the changes in customer attention through the topic model and provides a basis for guiding hotel managers to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Practical implications Empirical findings would provide useful insights into tourism management and improve hotel service quality during the COVID-19 epidemic era. Originality/value This research explores the hotel customer satisfaction in the field of hotel management before COVID-19 and after COVID-19, by using text mining to analyse mandarin online reviews. The results of this study will suggest that the hotel industry should continuously adjust its products and services based on the effective information obtained from customer reviews, so as to realize the activation and revitalization of the hotel industry in the epidemic era.


Author(s):  
Seth Jacobs ◽  
Matthew Pfarr ◽  
Mohammad Fazelpour ◽  
Abdul Koroma ◽  
Tseday Mesfin

Abstract The size of a team can affect how they tackle a design problem and solution quality. This paper presents a protocol study of the impact of team size on problem-solving and design solution quality. The protocols are coded with micro-strategies, and macro-strategies, and final solutions are scored using a rubric of meeting constraints, manufacturability, feasibility, and cost. The results show that the larger design team sizes analyze design solutions more frequently and propose solutions less than the smaller design teams. Among the three team sizes of 1, 3, and 5, the teams of three designers scored the best on final designs. These teams used a fair amount of both proposing solutions and analyzing solutions of micro-strategies. The teams of 5 designers use backtracking macro-strategies more frequent than teams of 3 and one because as the team size increases, more time is spent among team members to discuss previous ideas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-69
Author(s):  
Melissa Harden

Abstract Objective – The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education has generated a significant amount of discussion among academic librarians; however, few have discussed the potential impact on learning when students interact directly with the Framework itself. At the University of Notre Dame, over 1,900 first-year students completed an information literacy assignment in their required first-year experience course. Students read a condensed version of the Framework, then wrote a response discussing how a frame of their choosing was reflected in an assigned reading. The goal of this exploratory study was to determine if the students demonstrated an understanding of the themes and concepts in the Framework based on this assignment. Methods – Topic modeling, a method for discovering topics contained in a corpus of text, was used to explore the themes that emerged in the students’ responses to this assignment and assess the degree to which they connect to frames in the Framework. The model receives no information about the Framework prior to the analysis; it only uses the students’ words to form topics. Results – The responses formed several topics that are recognizable as related to the frames from the Framework, suggesting that students were able to engage effectively and meaningfully with the language of the Framework. Because the topic model does not know anything about the Framework, the fact that the responses formed topics that are recognizable as frames suggests that students internalized the concepts in the Framework well enough to express them in their own writing. Conclusion – This research provides insight regarding the impact that the Framework may have on student understanding of information literacy concepts.


Author(s):  
Christopher B. Williams ◽  
John Gero ◽  
Yoon Lee ◽  
Marie Paretti

In this paper, the authors report on progress of a longitudinal study on the impact of design education on students’ design thinking and practice. Using innovations in cognitive science and new methods of protocol analysis, the authors are working with engineering students to characterize their design cognition as they progress through engineering curricula. In this paper, the results from a protocol study of sophomore Mechanical Engineering students are presented. Specifically, data gathered from two experimental sessions (conducted before and after the students’ introductory design course) are analyzed to identify changes in design thinking cognition. Design cognition is determined using protocol analysis with the coding of the protocols based on a general design ontology, namely, the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) as a principled coding scheme (as opposed to an ad hoc one). Preliminary results indicate that statistically significant changes in students’ design cognition occur over the course of their sophomore year. The change manifests itself in an increase in focus on the purposes of designs being produced, which is often a precursor to the production a higher quality designs, and an increase in the design processes associated with the introduction of purposes of designs.


1982 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm M. Helper ◽  
Edward D. Farber ◽  
Steven Feldgaier

The impact of alternative thinking on overt behavior of learning impaired second and third graders (66 boys, 21 girls) was examined. Measures of alternative problem solutions, classroom behavior, and reading proficiency were obtained before and after subjects participated in a therapeutic tutoring program. Some subjects received formal training in interpersonal problem solving as well as tutoring while others received only tutoring. At pretest, number of alternative solutions correlated positively (not negatively as expected) to teachers' ratings of acting-out behavior for boys and positively (as expected) to “good-student” behavior by girls. Training in problem solving had no measurable effect on the number of alternative problem solutions generated or on classroom behavior but did lead to reduced reading gains. Increases in alternative problem solutions from pretest to posttest were associated with increases in acting-out behavior for both boys and girls. It is suggested that numerous alternative solutions may reflect impulsive or uncritical thinking rather than constructive social skills by learning disabled children.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 1309-1318 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. DONALDSON ◽  
D. LAM

Background. Ruminating when depressed is thought to lower mood and impair problem-solving, while distraction is thought to alleviate mood and assist problem-solving. The present study investigates each of these proposals using both naturally occurring and experimentally induced rumination and distraction in a sample of patients with major depression.Method. Thirty-six patients with major depression and 36 control participants were randomly allocated to either a rumination or distraction induction condition. Levels of trait rumination and distraction were measured at baseline, mood and problem-solving were measured before and after the inductions.Results. In terms of trait measures, depressed patients with higher levels of trait rumination reported poorer mood and gave less effective problem solutions than those who were less ruminative. Trait distraction was not associated with mood or problem-solving. In terms of induced responses, depressed patients who were made to ruminate experienced a deterioration in their mood and gave poorer problem solutions. For those receiving the distraction induction, mood improved in all patients and problem-solving improved in patients who were not naturally ruminating at a high level. Neither induction had an impact on mood or problem-solving in control participants.Conclusions. Treatment for depression associated with adverse life events may need to target rumination as well as problem-solving deficits if interventions are to be effective. The differential effects of self-applied versus experimentally induced distraction require further investigation. Future research will need to consider that high levels of trait rumination may interfere with the impact of experimental inductions.


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