Artefacts Supporting Distributed Design Collaboration

This study addresses the mechanisms by which collaboration environments affect design teams’ collaboration via shared artefacts. We collected data by observing design teams consisting of experts and decision makers. The teams utilized (1) a state-of-the-art web conferencing collaboration environment and (2) a three-dimensional virtual world in their collaboration. Our analysis reveals the virtual worlds’ potential to foster the use of pictorial documents as design teams’ shared artefacts. In addition, our study embraces the web conferencing tool’s potential to nourish interaction on the basis of written artefacts. The findings contribute towards distributed design research, describing the role of design artefacts, and describing ways, how different collaboration environments can support distributed design teamwork.