| The recent advances in network computing, centered around emerging Web technologies, have created tremendous new opportunities for collaboration. Computer support for collaborative design has recently become more available even to designers who are not computer professionals. Unfortunately, the aggressive pace of technical advancement has far outstripped development of metrics and techniques for characterizing and evaluating the novel collaboration environments being developed. Very few research efforts have attempted to investigate how these collaborative technologies support or impact the computer-mediated design process in architecture. This study provides an empirical characterization and understanding of existing Internet collaborative technology and how it supports architectural design. Specifically, the study four main issues: usage patterns of different media and how they support and maintain the shared understanding of the design problem, how design team members interact when using computer-mediated collaborate technology, how they communicate and document their design, and design team members' satisfaction with the collaboration process.;Using NetMeeting, an Internet-based collaboration environment, twenty teams of two participants collaborated to reach a solution to an architectural design problem. Each team member was isolated to assure that collaboration was performed solely using the computer-mediated environment. The study used a multi-method approach to collect and analyze data. The research methodology included: structured questionnaire, analysis of videotapes of workspace activities, and review of communication and design artifacts.;Results of the study showed that computer-mediated collaborative technology is adequate for supporting architectural collaborative design and that participants were fairly satisfied with it. This is in contrast to general assumptions about mutichannel computer mediated collaborative environments as difficult to use, general purpose and inappropriate to architectural collaboration. Findings from this study highlight several issues such as users' tendency to use particular media when they express or share a particular type of design information, the dominant role of interactive shared drawing channels, the video channel played a lesser role than indicated by earlier research, and different usage patterns of whiteboard and sharing AutoCAD. The results also provide a strong evidentiary support for the iteration between analysis, synthesis, and evaluation activities proposed by design process models. |
