Moving beyond an interdisciplinary paradigm

Our future requires collaborative minds to solve some of the wicked problems our global communities now face. Interdisciplinarity became the focus for design activity where two or more design disciplines come together to solve complex issues. Interdisciplinary activity suggests that this collaborative activity remains confined to one discipline arena, most often with participants remaining within their skill set, and does not promote cross boundary pollination. Transdisciplinary design activity however is defined as the collaboration of two or more disciplines where participants no longer restrict their thinking or activity to their specific skill set, suggesting that lines become blurred, merging skills together to achieve solutions to complex systems. This paper will discuss the impact of transdisciplinary design activity, between design and medical students, where they collaborated within a clinical environment to improve the patient experience. Through student reflections, it explores the impact of transdisciplinarity to facilitate transformative landscapes, improving the patient experience.