Spatial Context, Materiality, and Collaborative Design

• In Event: Coordination/Collaboration in and Across Organizations

Abstract

We explore the social ecologies of collaborative design, focusing on the way that spatial context and material tools interact with the collaboration and ideation of design teams. We employ custom designed design tools which offers unique affordances with the potential to alter collaboration in important ways. In this study, we examine how design engineering teams collaborate on a toy design task, either using the tablet-based sketching or pencil-and-paper tools, and working in either open (public lounge near other teams and open to others passing through) or closed (conference room) spatial contexts. We study the ecology of collaboration at three levels: human-human interaction, human-artifact interaction, and human-spatial interaction. To examine these, we use sociometric methods to create novel constructs and to provide insight into the dynamics of design, creativity, and collaboration.

Authors

• Lorraine G. Kisselburgh, Purdue U

• Ninger Zhou, Purdue U

• Senthil Chandrasegaran, Purdue U

• Elizabeth D. Wilhoit, Purdue U

• Joran Booth, Purdue U

• Sriram Karthik Badam, Purdue U

• Niklas Elmqvist, Purdue U

• Karthik Ramani, Purdue U