Perspectives on quality of collaboration in design

This special issue brings together recent research on collaboration in design situations, with a focus on analysing and evaluating the ‘quality of collaboration’ in these situations. Although there is no consensus on a definition of collaboration, most researchers would agree that it involves sharing of goals, resources and representations relating to the joint activity of participants. Other important aspects relate to mutual respect, trust, responsibilities and accountability, within situational rules and norms. Moreover, the very notion of collaboration seems to presuppose a certain degree of equality between participants in terms of right to contribute (notwithstanding a more or less hierarchical situation) in the context of a socio-institutional mode of organisation that favours co-elaboration of ideas, knowledge objects or tangible artefacts. In task-oriented collective activities such as design, the question of the interplay between collaboration processes, task processes and their (various) outcomes is central, not least in order to try to understand what ways of working together favour most effective designs. This is a question that concerns the broad range of social actors involved in and concerned by design activity, across different professional and educational situations. The integrative concept of ‘quality of collaboration’ has been proposed recently as a means for addressing this question. The term ‘quality’ here can be understood from different points of view: in descriptive terms (identifying and discriminating the intrinsic properties of collaboration), in a normative sense (identifying what makes ‘good’ or less good collaboration, considered sui generis as well as in relation to its outcomes), or a combination of both. Different perspectives on the collaborative process and experience can be considered and compared, from first-person perspectives (of collaboration participants, of their institutions, companies) to third-party analyses of the complex processes and outcomes associated with collaborative design activity. This special issue on the quality of collaboration in design situations comprises four contributions that represent various disciplinary approaches and research domains, in cognitive ergonomics and psychology (Détienne, Baker and Burkhardt), conversational analysis and ethnomethodology (Heinemann, Landgrebe and Matthews), discourse/dialogue analysis (Karlgren) and design methodology (Feast). Heinemann, Landgrebe and Matthews adopt a first-person (participants’) perspective based on analysis of interaction in a context of participatory design. Their ethno-methodological and conversational analysis approach proposes a CoDesign Vol. 8, No. 4, December 2012, 197–199