A Design Approach for Collaboration Processes: A Multimethod Design Science Study in Collaboration Engineering

TLDR

Collaboration engineering designs repeatable collaboration processes executable by practitioners without facilitators, yet it requires careful design activities and choices. The study aimed to develop a design approach for collaboration engineering that integrates process design methods, pattern‑based principles, and facilitator insights. The approach was iteratively developed and refined over four years through four trials involving 37 students. Results show the approach effectively supports designing repeatable collaboration processes and exemplifies a multimethod design science methodology. Keywords: collaboration engineering, design science, facilitation, group support systems, pattern language.

Abstract

Abstract Collaboration engineering is an approach for the design and deployment of repeatable collaboration processes that can be executed by practitioners without the support of collaboration professionals such as facilitators. A critical challenge in collaboration engineering concerns how the design activities have to be executed and which design choices have to be made to create a process design. We report on a four-year design science study in which we developed a design approach for collaboration engineering that incorporates existing process design methods, pattern-based design principles, and insights from expert facilitators regarding design challenges and choices. The resulting approach was evaluated and continuously improved in four trials with 37 students. Our findings suggest that this approach is useful to support the design of repeatable collaboration processes. Our study further serves as an example of how a design approach can be developed and improved following a multimethod design science approach. Keywords: collaboration engineeringdesign sciencefacilitationgroup support systems (GSS)pattern language