Studying designers' behaviour in collaborative virtual workspaces using quantitative methods

This paper presents a case study comparing the behaviour of designers in a collaborative 3D virtual environment with those in a face-to-face environment using quantitative tools to examine their design protocols. It starts with depicting a design ontology along with two methods of analysis for this investigation. The results in this case show that the 3D environment increases the designer's Structure activities. The rate of meaningful design communication is slower than the base-line face-to-face session. This communication reflects the rate of design cognition when the design process is "close coupled". Reviewing the design protocol suggests that the 3D design session composed of both "loosely coupled" and "close coupled" periods. This is consistent with other studies that 3D collaborative tools may encourage "loosely coupled" design process. ©2010, Association for Research in Computer-Aided Architectural Research in Asia (CAADRIA).