A Meta-Design Model for Creative Distributed Collaborative Design

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Zhu ◽  
Barbara R. Barricelli ◽  
Claudia Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Model ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Concrete Case ◽  
Factory Automation ◽  
Design Time ◽  
New Strategies

As collaboration in creating software systems becomes more complex and frequent among multidisciplinary teams, finding new strategies to support this collaboration becomes crucial. The challenge is to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Moreover, future uses and issues cannot be completely anticipated at design time, and it is necessary to develop open-ended software environments that can be evolved and tailored in opportunistic ways to tackle co-evolution of users and systems. A conceptual meta-design model, the Hive-Mind Space (HMS) model, has been proposed to support multidisciplinary design teams’ collaboration and foster their situated innovation. The model provides localized habitable environments for diverse stakeholders and tools for them to tailor the system, allowing the co-evolution of systems and practices. The authors explore the possibility of utilizing boundary objects within the HMS model to facilitate the communication amongst stakeholders as well as their participation in the creative distributed design process. Two concrete case studies, a factory automation and the Valchiavenna Portal, demonstrate the implementation of the HMS model and provide a possible solution to overcome the complex, evolving and emerging nature of the collaborative design.

A Meta-Design Model for Creative Distributed Collaborative Design

2012 ◽  
pp. 252-268
Author(s):  
Li Zhu ◽  
Barbara R. Barricelli ◽  
Claudia Iacob
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Model ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Factory Automation ◽  
New Strategies

As collaboration in creating software systems becomes more complex and frequent among multidisciplinary teams, finding new strategies to support this collaboration becomes crucial. The challenge is to bridge the communication gaps among stakeholders with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. Moreover, future uses and issues cannot be completely anticipated at design time, and it is necessary to develop open-ended software environments that can be evolved and tailored in opportunistic ways to tackle co-evolution of users and systems. A conceptual meta-design model, the Hive-Mind Space (HMS) model, has been proposed to support multidisciplinary design teams’ collaboration and foster their situated innovation. The model provides localized habitable environments for diverse stakeholders and tools for them to tailor the system, allowing the co-evolution of systems and practices. The authors explore the possibility of utilizing boundary objects within the HMS model to facilitate the communication amongst stakeholders as well as their participation in the creative distributed design process. Two concrete case studies, a factory automation and the Valchiavenna Portal, demonstrate the implementation of the HMS model and provide a possible solution to overcome the complex, evolving and emerging nature of the collaborative design.

An Integrative Bargaining Paradigm for Investigating Multidisciplinary Design Tradeoffs

1994 ◽  
Vol 38 (16) ◽  
pp. 1028-1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford E. Brown ◽  
Jonathan A. Selvaraj ◽  
Brian S. Zaff ◽  
Michael D. McNeese ◽  
Randall D. Whitaker
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Design Decision ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Initial Report ◽  
Initial Validation ◽  
Design Tradeoffs

In design teams, decision making entails negotiation among parties pursuing common goals with potentially divergent interests and objectives (Bucciarelli, 1988). In multidisciplinary design teams, these parties negotiate from perspectives further biased by their respective backgrounds, expertise, and roles. System design can be improved if we better understand how technical data are communicated and assimilated, how mutually advantageous tradeoffs are discovered, and how the managing of design tradeoffs can best be supported. As part of our larger research effort in Collaborative Design Technology, we are examining the processes by which integrative design tradeoffs are realized, in preparation for enhancing these processes through data visualization and communication tools facilitating mutual understanding and consensual decision making. This initial report describes our work to date in creating and validating an experimental paradigm to serve as a testbed for subsequent studies of multidisciplinary design practice. This paper describes the paradigm and the initial attempts to demonstrate its ecological validity. This initial validation effort involved a comparison of novices and experts in the field of design and their performance on the design decision making task. We found that experts performed better than novices on the design task, which provided initial validation support for the experimental paradigm.

scholarly journals COLLABORATIVE DIGITAL DESIGN NOTEBOOKS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph O. Buchal
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Digital Design ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Shared Workspace ◽  
Large Classes ◽  
Team Design ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
And Training ◽  
And Task

 Abstract – Many design courses require students to maintain a paper-based personal design notebook or journal. The potential advantages of a digital notebook have been described in the literature, but few reports can be found on the use of digital notebooks in practice. This paper describes the design and implementation of a cloud-based collaborative workspace to provide a shared team design notebook. The shared workspace uses Microsoft SharePoint sites and Microsoft OneNote notebooks as the main components. SharePoint sites were created for 34 design teams in a 2nd-year engineering design course. Each site had a team notebook, document library, discussion forum, and task scheduler. Instructions and training were provided at the beginning of the course. Students were able to use the tools with little difficulty, and were able to use them as an effective replacement for a paper notebook. However, many teams did not make full use of the available capabilities, and there was little evidence of higher-level collaborative activities. The described implementation is technically and financially feasible, is scalable to large classes, and satisfies most of the requirements of a collaborative design notebook. However, scaffolding and training are needed to ensure that students collaborate effectively.

Investigating the Use of Large-Scale Immersive Computing Environments in Collaborative Design

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meisha Rosenberg ◽  
Judy M. Vance
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
3D Cad ◽  
Cad Models ◽  
Computing Environments ◽  
Design Ideas ◽  
Human Motions

Successful collaborative design requires in-depth communication between experts from different disciplines. Many design decisions are made based on a shared mental model and understanding of key features and functions before the first prototype is built. Large-Scale Immersive Computing Environments (LSICEs) provide the opportunity for teams of experts to view and interact with 3D CAD models using natural human motions to explore potential design configurations. This paper presents the results of a class exercise where student design teams used an LSICE to examine their design ideas and make decisions during the design process. The goal of this research is to gain an understanding of (1) whether the decisions made by the students are improved by full-scale visualizations of their designs in LSICEs, (2) how the use of LSICEs affect the communication of students with collaborators and clients, and (3) how the interaction methods provided in LSICEs affect the design process. The results of this research indicate that the use of LSICEs improves communication among design team members.

Contribution of the co.LAB Framework to the Collaborative Design of Serious Games: Mixed-Methods Validation Study (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Jaccard ◽  
Laurent Suppan ◽  
Félicia Bielser
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Serious Game ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Design And Development ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Impact

BACKGROUND Multidisciplinary collaboration is essential to the successful development of serious games, albeit difficult to achieve. The co.LAB serious game design framework was created to support collaboration within serious game multidisciplinary design teams. Its use has not yet been validated in a naturalistic context. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to perform a first assessment of the impact of the co.LAB framework on collaboration within multidisciplinary teams during serious game design and development. METHODS This was a mixed-methods study based on two serious game design projects in which the co.LAB framework was used. The first phase was qualitative and carried out using a general inductive approach. To this end, all members of the first serious game project team who used the co.LAB framework were invited to take part in a focus group session (N=6). Results inferred from qualitative data were then used to define a quantitative instrument (questionnaire) which was designed according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys. Members of both project teams (N=11) were then asked to answer the questionnaire. Quantitative results were reported as median [Q1;Q3] and appropriate non-parametric tests used to assess for between group differences. Finally, results gathered through the qualitative and quantitative phases were integrated. RESULTS In both phases, the participation rate was 100%. Verbatim transcripts were classified into 4 high level themes: influence on collaborative dimensions; impact on project course, monitoring and efficiency; qualitative perceptions of the framework; and influence of team composition on the use of the framework. Accordingly, the web-based questionnaire was then developed according to Burhardt's seven dimensions of collaboration. In both projects, the co.LAB framework had a positive impact on most dimensions of collaboration during the multidisciplinary design and development of serious games. When all collaborative dimensions were aggregated, the overall impact of the framework was rated on a scale from "-42" to "+42" (very negative to very positive). The overall score was 23 [20;27], with no significant difference between groups (P=.58). Most respondents also believed that all serious game design teams should include a member possessing a significant expertise in serious game design frameworks to guide the development process. CONCLUSIONS The co.LAB framework has a positive impact on collaboration within serious game development teams. However, expert guidance seems necessary to maximize development efficiency. Whether such guidance can be provided by means of a collaborative web platform remains to be determined.

Innovations in Collaborative Web Design

2007 ◽  
pp. 148-164
Author(s):  
Madelon Evers
Keyword(s):  
Stakeholder Participation ◽  
Action Learning ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Web Design ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Multidisciplinary Design ◽  
Design Decision ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Design Projects

In this chapter we analyse the link between multidisciplinary design and team learning, which, we argue, need to be supported in equal measure during Web design projects. We introduce a new approach to collaborative Web design, called the “Design and Learning Methodology,” as a way to support these two processes. The approach involves many stakeholders, including future website users, in design decision-making. It structures stakeholder participation through multidisciplinary design teams (MDTs). It uses professional facilitators to guide design and learning processes. Facilitation tools are drawn from a combination of action learning methods, which help MDTs reflect and act on new knowledge gained from design experiences, and human-centred design, which is an international protocol for achieving quality in interactive systems design (ISO 9000 series). Based on our research, we describe how facilitation of the process of learning from design contributes to continuous improvement in collaborative competencies needed for Web design.

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