Reframing Boundaries of Unfamiliar Learning Experiences through the Use of Design Mock-ups in Business Management Studies

The study investigates the effectiveness of using design mock-ups by business learners as part of their innovation journeys. It draws on learners’ experiences in a final year elective module (Managing Strategic Design) delivered on an undergraduate management degree. This module has been designed to challenge learners to develop truly innovative business opportunities, utilising design and strategic thinking. The design mock-ups are examined for their capacity to help learners to traverse disciplinary and conceptual boundaries in order to seek out innovative solutions. In design, reliance on mock-ups as teaching tools informs critical aspects of learning about the design concepts and processes, but this is not the case in business. We investigate the impact of creating such artefacts by teams as a means of mediating collaborative interaction within innovation process and for the ways learners encounter the unfamiliar and incorporate it into their learning experiences. The methodology underpinning the investigation is that of participatory action research, where the analysis draws on the observed processes of making the mock-ups, assessment feedback on the mock-up submissions and learners’ reflection on creating the mock-ups.

The current literature on innovation already acknowledges that artefacts play an important role in the innovation process. However, our study indicates that the purposeful process of making such artefacts as a way to make sense of the innovation has added value. The physical act of making combines the emotional response to the collaboration with managing the uncertainty of the innovation process. As the artefacts become conduits of the social interactions within the teams, they reveal the role they play in reframing the encountered learning boundaries into a ‘new familiar’. We conclude that the process of making sense of the unfamiliar and re-creating it into the ‘new familiar’ takes place at metacognitive level. Thus, the exploration of the ways in which the creation of design mock-up assists this process of metacognitive reframing has implication for the learning environments in which it takes place.