Co-creating external design representations: Comparing face-to-face sketching to designing in virtual environments

Abstract

While developments in computer-supported collaborative work tools, computer aided design and the availability of high bandwidth networks offer alternative collaborative environments for design, the alternatives have yet to be characterised in terms of their impact on the co-creation of a shared model. A specific collaborative design environment makes a commitment to the way in which the designers can communicate and co-create an external representation of the shared design model. This research focuses on the impact of alternative collaborative virtual environments on design behaviour and collaborative processes. An experiment was conducted to identify similarities and differences between co-located collaborative designing using sketches as the external representation and remote collaborative designing sessions using sketches and 3-D models. The results of this study are discussed in terms of: (1) the effect of being remotely located; (2) the effect of the type of external representations.

Technologies for Supporting Creativity in Design: A View of Physical and Virtual Environments with Regard to Cognitive and Social Processes

“…Koutsabasis et al (2012) analyzed designers' work inside virtual worlds and found that these spaces enhanced the design team communication and were perceived as satisfactory collaboration environments by the designers. In addition when collaborating remotely, designers seem to be more interested in seeing the avatar in the virtual world rather than seeing each other's face on the video screen (Gül & Maher, 2009). In the same line, Raveendhran, Fast and Carnevale (2020) showed that when the contexts require frequent monitoring, leaders prefer interacting with their subordinates virtually via avatars rather than having face-to-face interactions, and this effect seems due to increased concerns about negative social evaluation.…”

Exploring Co-creative Drawing Workflows

“…In particular, comparing in-person human-to-human sketching to that of collaborative human-to-human remote sketching in terms of multimodal communication (Eris et al, 2014) has been studied. Studies also analysed the use of sketching and gesturing and compared how they differ when done in-person on a shared canvas to that on digital shared canvas (Zurita et al, 2008) or virtual environment (Gül and Maher, 2009). In design sketching, the sketch is not the final output.…”

Multidisciplinary design collaboration in the lenses of CSCW and current technology enablement

“…Kleinsmann and Lugt (2007) in a different study, suggest that the correct perception of the sketches requires knowledge of the jargon and an understanding of the context. In the discourse of CSCW, Gül and Maher (2009) in their comparative study between face-to-face and remote collaboration meetings with sketches, find that in remote sketching, teams dedicated more time on creating and deleting; whereas in the co-located meetings more time was spent on writing. Similarly to this finding, Garner (2001) shows that remote teams spent 51% more time on creating visual representation.…”