# Revisiting Problem-Solution Co-Evolution in the Context of Team Conceptual Design Activity
## 4 Discussion
### Implications, Limitations, and Future Work  
Two main areas of implication emerge based on the presented research: design theory and design education. Implications for design theory stem primarily from the newly obtained insights on the nature of designing in teams and the existing models' limited ability to capture what [PERSON] and [PERSON] describe as \"constant iteration of analysis, synthesis and evaluation processes between the two notional design'spaces' - problem space and solution space\" [20] in the context of team design activity. It has been demonstrated that analysis cannot be observed solely through the lens of the design problem, nor can synthesis and evaluation be perceived as processes exclusive to the solution space. The three fundamental state transitions were shown to take part in the exploration of both the problems and solutions. The main reason why the conventional prescriptive models and their descriptive counterparts cannot completely describe the constant iteration of ASE between the problem and the solution space lies primarily in the different definitions and scales (granularity levels) they apply to the three transitions. The definition and scale differences hinder not only modelling of the shared understanding through collective analysis of solution ideas, as it is the case with some of the ASE-based prescriptive models (e.g., [38; 39]), but also prevents descriptive models of team design thinking to model the creation and assessment of new problem entities, such as requirements, needs, or constraints (e.g., [40; 41; 42]). Moreover, different definitions hinder straightforward inter-study comparison, study replication, model reuse, and comparing of notes, since the results always must be viewed in the context of how the authors interpreted analysis, synthesis, and evaluation in their study. The definition of ASE as state transitions applicable to both the problem and the solution space, together with their mapping to different fine-grain process notions from design literature as proposed in this study, may facilitate result comparison and alignment of various design models. Implications for design education relate mainly to the conventional literature problem-solving processes that should be adjusted to support also solving ill-defined design problems as a collective endeavour. As mentioned in the introduction, the applicability of the conventionally taught procedure of problem analysis followed by solution synthesis and evaluation for solving of ill-defined problems has already been questioned by some researchers [16; 17; 18; 19; 20]. Moreover, the high amount of creative stimulation that results from collaborative analysis during team design activities [63] results in an alternation of analysis and synthesis transitions that are typically not envisioned by the prescriptive textbook models. On the other hand, the co-evolution perspective is not much discussed in design education [104], and a study has shown that students are typically unaware of the co-evolution processes [105]. Nevertheless, design ability gained through education should not focus solely on conventional problem-solving but include also the resolving of ill-defined problems and adopting of solution-focused cognitive strategies [106]. This ability to frame problems and solutions through co-evolution is critical for the high level of performance in creative design [107]. It is here argued that teams, in particular, can harness the benefits of co-evolution, expressed in decomposition, exploration, and understanding of the design problems and solutions, due to the analysis-intensive dynamics of team design activity. Research limitations are largely related to the quantity and quality of data collected through the protocol analysis study.