Synchronous Support and Emergence in Collaborative CAAD

Design is rarely an activity that is commenced and completed by an individual The more common design environment is one in which teams of designers work together towards a final solution. In this paper we consider issues involved in the development of computer-based design environments in which teams of design professionals can collaborate, focusing on the need for visual and underlying representations which can support multiple interpretations. We consider the environment as providing a shared workspace which facilitates both communication and progression of design ideas, concepts, and drawings. In the environment presented here, the shared workspace has two foci: the workspace that designers see and interact with, and the workspace that provides an underlying computer-based representation for persistent memory. The emphasis is on providing representations that support emergence that occurs during collaboration