THE iLOFT PROJECT: A TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED COLLABORATIVE DESIGN WORKSPACE AS RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

Abstract

For the past two years, the authors have been working to address the challenges of collecting data on design teams by creating a family of workspaces that design teams can utilize while researchers study their activity. A first iteration in this endeavor was the Design Observatory[1], which provided a space in which researchers could structured experiments with design teams. The latest of these spaces, the iLoft, is designed to attract designers to a suite of advanced collaboration and information technologies they can use in their regular work, and thereby provide greater opportunity to study their activity during design.