MODELLING THE PROCESS OF CREATING A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING IN DISTRIBUTED DESIGN TEAMS

Cooperation is an important issue in design teamwork. This paper is an attempt to contribute a theoretical framework through the modelling of the process of creating a mutual understanding during remote synchronous design sessions. We present here some reflections based on a review of the available literature in engineering design, on the experience accumulated in field studies and on a distributed design protocol we have recently carried out. We propose a model of an elementary design interaction between two participants of the design process. We take the Situated FBS Framework as a basic individual cognitive model and we propose to extend it through the concept of design intermediary objects and cognitive synchronisation.