Remote Synchronous Collaboration in Industrial Design Teams

This book presents a comprehensive study of the real-time digital interactions of industrial design teams engaged in remote and real-time collaborative design during the conceptual phase of design. The interaction mechanisms provided by digital applications shape the nature of communication of designers during remote collaboration. This presents a challenge for collaborating designers to ideate during the early stages of design without hampering the natural fluency and fluidity of their cognitive processes.

Based on empirical investigations, the book provides an understanding of remote synchronous collaborative design processes of remote design teams. It introduces a new research method, a new taxonomy, and a coding scheme to analyse and describe the multi-modal interactions of designers during remote synchronous collaborative design sessions, as well as new indices to evaluate these interactions. Together, these act as tools for advancing research in remote collaborative design. The book also presents two intelligent models for predicting early-stage design phases during remote synchronous collaboration. These intelligent models support remote collaborative design processes to augment human abilities and can transform the design of digital applications and the design profession, which is now conducted almost entirely in digital environments.

The book can be a valuable resource for design researchers in this field, as well as user researchers and makers of remote collaboration software applications for designers. It can also be referred to as a textbook for remote design collaboration at the post-graduate level.