Design reviews with remote critics in an asynchronous environment

INTRODUCTION A familiar activity to students of design is the design review – where students present their work-to-date to receive feedback and guidance from others. They take place throughout the term, providing students with multiple opportunities to present and develop their ideas (Schön, 1987). At Georgia Tech, we have been exploring how simple technologies can be used to increase opportunities for dialog in the design studio by expanding the range of topics, ways of participating, and set of participants in that dialog. One thread of this research deals with using remote critics in design reviews. Using technology, remote critics are able to view students’ work and comment on it without traveling to the studio. In addition to solving some logistical problems of bringing visitors to the studio (e.g. scheduling, expense), we speculated that allowing remote critics to participate in design reviews had the potential to not only expand the set of participants in the dialog, but to change it in fundamental ways.