Communication roles that support collaboration during the design process

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that design (and development) teams increasingly include participants from different domains who must explore and integrate their specialized knowledge in order to create innovative and competitive artefacts and reduce design and development costs. Thus communication, integration of specialized knowledge, and negotiation of differences among domain specialists has emerged as a fundamental component of the design process. This paper presents thirteen communication roles that emerged during four multi-disciplinary design situations in the USA and Europe. These roles supported knowledge exploration and integration, collaboration, and task and project completion by filtering and providing information and negotiating differences across organizational, task, discipline, and personal boundaries. Implications for design methods, tools and education are discussed.