Supporting collaborative design groups as design communities

✍ Scribed by David Latch Craig; Craig Zimring

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 568 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0142-694X
• DOI: 10.1016/s0142-694x(99)00041-1

✦ Synopsis

T he use of computers to facilitate collaboration in design education is becoming increasingly practical as networked computing becomes cheaper, faster, and more graphical. This paper maintains that computer systems can indeed be used to help students aid each other but argues that, to be effective, they must take into account both the nature of design and the nature of interpersonal communication, preferably in a connected fashion. An understanding of design is assumed to be important in setting communication goals, while an understanding of communication is assumed to be important in getting students to construct and interpret exchanges such that those communication goals are actually met. Based on the notion that a set of goals may look vastly different to a student than to a researcher or studio instructor, the latter assumption essentially holds that design students must be properly situated if communication between them is to unfold in a desired way.