The Impact of Digital Technologies On Collaborative Design

Abstract

Architects can design in virtual environments as a result of the technological developments that have taken place in recent years. The parties can work together in remote locations without the restrictions of being in the same place and time zones by using digital technologies. With the proliferation of employment of digital technologies in design field, design representations have also changed, and the research in this field has become pervaded. In this paper, we present an empirical study of comparison on designing with multi-dimensional external representations and working in face-to-face and remote locations. The protocol analysis is the method of the study, the design dialogues of participants and their interaction with the given interfaces are investigated. The impact of the technology on design cognition, communication and interaction is investigated. The results show that 1) sketching and 3D modelling environments support similar design process regardless of the used technology and 2)working on the shared design representation in the same and remote locations support different communication and interaction behavior.

Keywords

• augmented reality
• digital sketching; collaborative design; affordances theory; virtual worlds.