Supporting collaborative design by embedding communication and history in design artifacts

Although the computer has been viewed as an aid to communication and design, both in face-to-face meetings and asynchronous interaction, collaborative design has proven difficult to support. Designers need to communicate about designs, access and interpret that communication, and understand the feedback that the artifacts and collaborators provide. Embedded communication clarifies tacit design knowledge by associating communication with the configuration which served to elicit it. Embedded history increases shared understanding between designers by allowing them to recreate the process by which an artifact evolved to its current state. A prototype system (I scNDY) instantiates this framework in the domain of local area network design. Using I scNDY, network designers embed textual and graphical annotations in the design artifact and their design changes are automatically archived. Evaluation of the system confirmed the role that embedded communication and history play in collaborative design and motivated further improvements in the implementation.

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