Virtual environments for collaborative design: requirements and guidelines from a social action perspective

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the design of virtual environments for collaborative design (VECD) – a particular class of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) that focus on supporting design activities. VECD are becoming essential collaboration platforms for many designers and their clients, in a wide range of design domains including product, interior, architectural, automotive design, etc. However, the contemporary design considerations of VECD are mainly driven by systematic approaches that do not reflect upon knowledge regarding requirements that stem out of everyday collaborative design activities. A consequence is that they do not yield methodical guidance to designers of VECD applications. This paper takes a social action standpoint for the purposeful identification and organisation of collaborative design activities; proposes guidelines at multiple levels of abstraction for the design of VECD; and, finally, applies these to a case study development of a specific VECD for interior space design. The paper provides practical aids to designers of VECD so that they incorporate requirements about collaborative design early in the development lifecycle.