Design Process Communication Methodology: Improving the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Collaboration, Sharing, and Understanding
Publication: Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 1
Abstract
Designers struggle to (1) collaborate within projects, (2) share processes across projects, and (3) understand processes across the firm or industry. Overcoming each challenge requires communication of design processes. This paper aggregates concepts from organizational science, human-computer interaction, and process modeling fields to develop the design process communication methodology (DPCM). The DPCM consists of elements that represent and contextualize processes and methods that enable designers to capture and use the processes. These elements and methods enable a methodology that is computable, embedded, modular, personalized, scalable, shared, social, and transparent. The authors operationalize the DPCM via the process integration platform, a cloud-based process communication application where individuals exchange and organize files as nodes in information dependency maps. This paper provides evidence of the DPCM’s testability and proposes metrics for evaluating the DPCM’s effectiveness and efficiency in communicating design processes. The DPCM lays the foundation for commercial software that shifts focus away from incremental and fragmented process improvement toward a platform that nurtures emergence of (1) improved multidisciplinary collaboration, (2) process knowledge sharing, and (3) innovation-enabling understanding of existing processes.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the supporters of this research, including Arup and the Center for Integrated Facilities Engineering (CIFE) at Stanford University, California. Also, the validation of this research would not be possible without the development of PIP by software architect David Anderson and support by programmer, Zheren Zhang.
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Published In
Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 1 • March 2014
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 12, 2012
Accepted: Jan 11, 2013
Published online: Jan 14, 2013
Published in print: Mar 1, 2014
Discussion open until: May 5, 2014
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