Observing Architectural Design: Improving the Development of Collaborative Design Environments

The physical environments in which design collaborations take place provide many affordances, which enable interactions to occur both seamlessly and (in most cases) successfully. Physical collaboration is also facilitated through many aspects of the design process. Virtual design collaboration on the other hand, while successful at achieving the direct representation of activity around the artefacts being manipulated, lacks many of the physical affordances which make collaboration in the physical realm successful. The aim of this paper is to present the physical affordances of design interaction, isolate those which aid the success of physical design and identify which factors are potentially beneficial to improve the affordances of virtual collaborative design environments.