Collaborative design: what is it?
Introduction
It has become accepted practice to use the term “collaborative systems” to describe the computer systems which support distal communication between designers. In the field of design, we are beginning to see the term computer-supported collaborative design used increasingly often. Although the term normally used is computer-supported collaborative work, a similar word, “co-operation”, appears to be used interchangeably with “collaboration”, as seen in the journal name Computer-Supported Cooperative Work or the paper title Exploring communication in collaborative design: co-operative architectural modelling [19].
In discussions about computer systems for collaborative design, their behaviours, specifications and implementation, the most fundamental arguments appear to be encountered on the issues of interaction 16, 23. What is the interaction to be provided, both interaction with the systems and interactions between participants? Not only do the participants need to share data but, how are they going to communicate with one another? To illustrate the issues and confusions, look at the discussions about the role of video — how important is it, how does it contribute to the interaction between participants and how wide does bandwidth have to be to support it. These issues are raised when considering other aspects of collaborative systems — data exchange; participant interactions with digital models; audio links; among others.
Cuff [5]has observed that participants in collaborative design “did not necessarily participate equally or collaboratively.” From our own experience, we can observe that simply working together or talking about the same subjects does not make the act collaborative [25]. What specifically makes these acts of collaboration or not? Is there any importance in the name applied to this field of study (CSCW), which is sometimes rendered `computer-supported collaborative work' and at others, `computer-supported co-operative work'?
Section snippets
What's in a word?
What do we mean by `collaboration'? Let us consider a variety of situations to explore the realm of activities that fall within our understanding of collaboration. We team together in design settings to take advantage of what Steiner [24]calls process gain. Collaborative success can therefore be said to be achieved when we have accomplished something in a group which could not be accomplished by an individual. Shea and Guzzo [22]identify three facets of a task which determine the success of
Designing
The act of designing is, to many, an act that involves others. Many practitioners cannot imagine completing an architectural design and saying “That is mine, and mine alone.” For most, the process of designing includes other members of their profession and members of other professions. To some, this is an ideological position — for example, those who hold the belief that the only good design is participatory design. Work such as that by Christopher Alexander [2]has attempted to formalise this
Implications for computer systems
Whether we are co-operating or collaborating, we can be designing, but our expectations for the design environment changes if we think we are doing one or the other. A loose-coupled design process requires a very much different set of tools and conditions to be successful than a close-coupled one. Collaboration requires more than machinery and systems to occur. To what extent the systems are necessary for collaboration has yet to be addressed — many working in this field have their vision
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