Web-based collaborative design studio: tools and programs

Since 1996, Kumamoto University has repeated several experiments to apply web-based collaborative design techniques to a junior design studio aiming to stimulate studentsinteraction in the class and to enhance their design abilities. When it became clear after a two-year experiment that writing web pages and uploading them to a web server was a barrier of communication for students, the authors developed a web-based groupware called GW-Notebook, and started using it in 1998. In the fall semester of 2000, the authors introduced a new design studio program, and tested the revised version of the groupware, GW-Notebook III. This paper discusses the features of the system, and gives an outline of the studio program and some of the findings in the studio as well as the use of the revised system.