Vibration of creativity: Exploring the relationship between appraisal shift and creative process in design teams

•The study explores the relationship between appraisal shifts within design teams and creative outcomes, emphasizing micro-process interactions.•Innovative timeline visualizations track appraisal shifts, enhancing understanding of creative processes and detailed team interaction analysis.•Emphasizes balanced attention to both problem and solution phases and their association with team creativity and efficiency.•Insights into team dynamics contribute to better management of the creative process, offering valuable resources for leaders in creative industries and design education. Appraisals, particularly their positive or negative valences, play a critical regulatory role in design thinking. The shift in appraisals holds significant research potential in the realm of team creativity. This study examines the relationship between appraisal shifts and the creative process within design teams, with a focus on collaborative design in a service design environment. By observing the dynamic changes in appraisals among team members at the micro-process level, we explore how these shifts are associated with team creativity. The study analyzed the interactions of 11 teams engaged in a structured experiment based on the double diamond model, utilizing video recordings and a comprehensive coding system to track the positive-negative shifts in appraisals. The findings indicate that appraisal shifts not only play a crucial role in the design process but also that their dynamic characteristics are somewhat related to the teams' creative performance. The study also compares how design teams perform differently in the problem and solution phases, emphasizing balanced attention to both phases. Additionally, a novel aspect of this study is the use of timeline visualizations to illustrate appraisal shifts, providing deeper insights into the interactions between team members and creative outputs. This research contributes to our understanding of the dynamic creative processes within design teams, offering valuable insights for optimizing team interaction patterns and enhancing the efficiency of design innovation.