The Impact of Virtual Environments on Design Collaboration

With recent developments in communication and information technology there has been increasing research into the role and the impact of computer media in collaborative design. This paper presents a case study that compares two designers collaborating in three different types of virtual environments with face to face (FTF) collaboration. The aim of the study is to identify similarities and differences between remote locations in order to have a better understanding of the impact of different virtual environments on design collaboration. Our results show that the architects had different designing behaviour depending on the type of external representation: they developed more design concepts, and had more design iterations through analysis-synthesis-evaluation while designing FTF and in a remote sketching environment; while the same architects focused on one design concept and making the design when designing in 3D virtual worlds.