8 Interdisciplinary Design Practice

Why integrate expertise

Many design challenges cannot be understood or solved from a single professional viewpoint. Interdisciplinary design integrates knowledge from areas such as user research, visual design, engineering, operations, policy, and community experience to frame a shared problem and shape a workable response. The National Science Foundation describes this kind of work as integrating information, methods, perspectives, and concepts from multiple disciplines to address problems beyond the scope of one field.

The terms for cross-disciplinary work are used differently across fields, but they distinguish different ways of bringing expertise together:

• Multidisciplinary work places different specialties alongside one another, often with each contributing a separate part.

• Interdisciplinary work combines insights and methods to develop a shared understanding or solution.

• Transdisciplinary work may also bring in knowledge from outside professional disciplines, such as lived experience and community practice.

The practical aim is to integrate the perspectives needed to address the challenge.

Form a team around the challenge

Begin by defining the challenge and identifying whose knowledge is needed, rather than simply gathering people with impressive titles. Consider including:

• People affected by the design: users, residents, clients, or frontline workers.

• Relevant disciplines: for example, research, design, technology, service operations, accessibility, and policy.

• Decision-makers and implementers: people who can approve, maintain, fund, or deliver the proposed design.

A team needs enough diversity to reveal assumptions and gaps while remaining small enough to work together effectively. Clarify what each participant contributes and what decisions the group can make. Where possible, include affected people as collaborators rather than treating them only as sources of information. People-centred work, collaboration and co-creation, visual communication, and iteration are emphasized as important design practices.

Facilitate shared understanding

A facilitator helps a group build a common working language and makes space for different forms of expertise. Simply bringing specialists into the same meeting does not ensure collaboration.

Useful practices include:

• Agree on a shared purpose. Write a shared challenge statement that connects the work to people’s needs and intended outcomes.

• Make assumptions visible. Invite participants to distinguish what they know, what they infer, and what they still need to learn.

• Translate jargon. Ask participants to explain specialist terms in plain language and connect them to the shared problem.

• Balance participation. Use quiet reflection, small-group discussion, and round-robin sharing, rather than relying only on open debate, where confident or senior voices may dominate.

• Use shared artifacts. Maps, sketches, journey diagrams, prototypes, and decision records give participants concrete material to discuss. Visual communication can help a diverse team develop shared understanding.

• Set decision rules. Clarify whether the group will decide by consensus, by a designated decision-maker after consultation, or through another agreed process. Record unresolved concerns and identify who will follow up.

Facilitation should not erase disagreement. Different disciplines may identify different risks or define success differently. Ask what evidence or responsibility lies behind each position, then explore whether testing, further research, or a revised design brief could resolve the difference.

Integrate expertise through the design process

The Double Diamond describes a cycle of discovering and defining a challenge, then developing and delivering potential responses. Interdisciplinary collaboration is most effective when it begins with problem framing and continues through testing and delivery. The process is flexible and iterative, not a strict handoff from one phase to the next.

Discover: learn together

Plan research collaboratively. A researcher may develop interview questions, a community partner may identify whom to consult, and an engineer or service operator may flag practical constraints. Compare observations rather than assuming that one specialty’s interpretation is a complete account.

Define: create a shared problem

Synthesize findings as a team. Identify user needs, constraints, and unanswered questions, then agree on a design brief. A shared brief helps specialists connect their work to the same goal instead of optimizing for separate measures of success.

Develop: create and test possibilities

Generate multiple concepts before settling on one. Bring relevant specialists and users into co-design and prototyping. For example, a team designing a public-transit trip planner might combine riders’ accounts of confusing transfers, a designer’s information hierarchy, an accessibility specialist’s review of interaction needs, and developers’ knowledge of technical constraints. A quick prototype can reveal where these concerns reinforce one another or conflict before substantial development begins.

Deliver: evaluate and improve

Test the proposed design in realistic conditions. Gather feedback from users and implementers, assess whether the design meets the brief, and revise where necessary. Iterative testing helps teams learn early and improve a concept rather than treating launch as the end of design.

Address common collaboration difficulties

Teams can encounter difficulties when expertise, responsibilities, or success criteria are not integrated. Responses should address the specific obstacle:

• Siloed contributions: People work separately and combine outputs only at the end. Hold regular integration sessions around shared research, sketches, or prototypes.

• Unclear ownership: Tasks or decisions fall between specialties. Document responsibilities, decision authority, and dependencies.

• Unequal influence: Status or disciplinary jargon outweighs relevant evidence. Establish participation norms and invite contributions in several formats.

• Competing definitions of success: Fields use different criteria. Agree on shared outcomes while documenting necessary discipline-specific measures.

• Premature commitment: The team chooses a favored idea before understanding users or constraints. Keep several options open, then test them against evidence.

Bring the practice together

Effective interdisciplinary design integrates expertise rather than merely assembling specialists. Teams form around a shared challenge, include relevant user and community knowledge, and use facilitation to build common understanding and make decisions transparently. Shared artifacts and iterative testing help diverse contributors shape a coherent design across research, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and delivery.