Collaboration Among Designers: Analysing an Activity for System Development

Abstract

Workplace studies provide an important input to system development, yet there is no straightforward way of translating empirical results into requirements. This study contributes to the development of methods by reporting an activity theory based approach consisting of (i) field observations, (ii) modelling and (iii) a specific task analysis for system requirements. The research informed the further development of the Build-it system, a multiuser system designed to support co-located interaction between designers in engineering and architecture, and other stakeholders such as clients, operators, or inhabitants. The background research was conducted in four engineering companies and comprised of meeting observations, a questionnaire on design collaboration (n ¼ 94) and the analysis of 20 artefacts. The findings indicate that collaboration is of critical importance to the design process, and at least some of the tasks in engineering design could be supported by a system like Build-it. The task analysis for system requirements involved potential users from engineering but extended the scope to other domains, namely architecture and chemical process engineering (n ¼ 22). In all three domains a multi-user system like Build-it would be advantageous; however, the specific requirements varied more than expected. The study critically reflects on the use of generic concepts and the process of conducting research for the purpose of understanding work for design.

Designerly ways of muddling through

“…(Michlewski, 2008, p. 378) Studies of designers at work (Badke-Schaub and Stempfle, 2003;Christiaans, 1992;Cross et al, 1996;Dorst, 1997;Frankenberger and Badke-Schaub, 1998;Kleinsmann, 2006; (Roozenburg and Eekels, 1995, p. 88). Lauche, 2005; have brought evidence of the continual interaction of design problems and design solutions, and the inductive reasoning of the designer. Cross (1989) attributes this interconnectedness to the 'pernicious' structure of design problems.…”

“…In design activities, the benefits of social fragmentation come to fore in the work of multifunctional and multidisciplinary teams (Badke-Schaub and Stempfle, 2003;Christiaans, 1992;Cross et al, 1996;Dorst, 1997;Frankenberger and BadkeSchaub, 1998;Kleinsmann, 2006;Lauche, 2005;. Research by Bucciarelli (1984Bucciarelli ( , 1994 shows how design resembles the social process of negotiation and consensus.…”

Modelling Creative Team Dynamics

“…Further, some researchers found that in practice, CSCW research is founded on a relatively narrow ethnographic foundation. Examples include Lauche's critique on the BUILD-IT project [25] and Shumarova and Swatman [8]'s critique of CITs. They reported that:…”

Physical and Digital Artifact-Mediated Coordination in Building Design

“…The Luminous planning table (Underkoffler and Ishii 1999) and Build-it (Lauche 2005) attempted to integrate multiple forms of physical and digital media to support the design process. The iRoom infrastructure originally developed by Johanson et al (2002) has also been extended and applied to design and construction meetings, perhaps most notably for the Center for Integrated Facilities Engineering (CIFE) at Stanford Kunz et al 2002).…”

“…Their group designed an augmented reality system called the Visual Interaction Platform to enhance early architectural design activities such as sketching on paper with an emphasis on elementary tasks such as positioning and overdrawing. We envision a system similar to the Jump System (Terry et al 2007) that supports tangible queries of paper-based drawings, the Luminous Planning Table ( Ben-Joseph et al 2001) and Build-it (Lauche 2005) that integrate digital and tangible media, or paper augmented digital documents (Guimbretiere 2003), which enable marks written on paper versions of a document to be recorded in the digital version. However, additional functionality is needed to support building design coordination and to further improve interactive navigation.…”