Some Opportunities and Limitations of the Cloud Computing Environment: In the Early Stage of Design Process

International audienceUsing a user experience approach, we identified certain opportunities provided and limitations faced by cloud computing applications in remote meetings of design teams. Fifteen designers participated in six teams of three or four members during a one and a half hour meeting. They worked on a task involving the conceptual design of a Web page or a Corporate identity for a research laboratory. The meeting took place in a distributed manner, using two cloud applications. We identified some factors corresponding to favorable and unfavorable aspects perceived by designers when working in a cloud computing environment. After six interviews, data were open-coded to synthesize emergent themes, and then categorized by frequencies into five fields: opportunities, organization of work, limitations, needs for other materials and design process. The results indicate a positive experience regarding the interaction and the coauthoring production, which constitute an opportunity presented by cloud computing technologies. Web task designers prefer working under non-noise disturbance conditions and using a clear whiteboard, while with graphic tasks, designers generally prefer more sophisticated drawing tools and easy graphic modifications when creating sketching concepts. The participants in this study were globally satisfied with the social exchange climate, i.e., the graphical remote sharing that allows an effective exchange of draft details among multiple users on-line. The cloud environment already presents technical problems, such as lags or leaps during information exchange; limitations which have been seen to disrupt communication flow in the early conceptualization stage