Design patterns for cross-cultural collaboration

Introduction Collaboration in design has become a geographically and culturally dispersed activity. Increasingly, design educators see the need to prepare young designers for an international market by providing students with skills not only for design, but also for intercultural communication and distributed collaboration research into computer-supported, intercultural collaborative design learning is becoming more important. A central problem in this endeavour is the identification of cross-cultural differences in collaboration and how to communicate this knowledge to designers and educators to facilitate the development of courses and interactive technologies. It has long been known that design patterns can offer a valuable format for the identification and communication of knowledge of successful design solutions for recurring problems (Alexander, 1979). A diverse range of design pattern collections has been developed, including patterns for computer-supported, collaborative working (CSCW, Lukosch & Schümmer, 2006) and pedagogy (Baggetun, Rusman, & Poggi, 2004). Lukosch and Schümmer's pattern collection, for example, offers a wide range of solutions to support collaboration. However, research in international collaboration suggests that solutions for supporting teamwork vary across cultures (Zhang, 2007; Kim & Bonk, 2002). Design patterns often presume a universal validity, but a design pattern is actually situated within a particular context and researchers have not yet examined the validity and effectiveness of design solutions in different cultural contexts. In an increasingly multi-cultural environment, designers and design educators need to be aware of differences that may affect the usefulness of a learning design solution across cultures. A learning design is a unit of learning materials, technology and assessment. Design patterns that report about the cultural context in which learning designs worked well allow designers of learning content and technologies to make informed decisions about the applicability of those learning designs in their learning environment. The patterns identified in this research build awareness of approaches that support collaboration across cultures.