Playing with Bricks for Metaphor Construction Poses a Serious Challenge to Design Students

The case study examines the final group output from a LEGO® Serious Play® (LSP) workshop with 26 teams in a Design Thinking course. Confirmed were difficulties students face with metaphors, as all gravitated towards physical prototyping. While team members contributed equally to final proposed designs, no creative synergy was observed in combining individual ideas into group shared models. The study provides vivid illustration of LSP’s limitations in the mid-phase of design thinking for student group projects.