Instruments for Collective Design in a Professional Context: Digital Format or New Processes ?
Samia Ben Rajeb, Pierre Leclercq · 2015
Abstract—This article reports on different collective practices and their instruments observed in the context of professional design activities. Based on interviews and in situ observations of customs in six architecture, engineering, and design agencies, it shows the diversity of typologies of collective activity, identifies the main factors of collaboration, and concludes on the needs for the instrumentation of professional practice. Is it a matter of building higher and higher performance digital formats for a shared modeling of the project or to lean instead towards the creation of new processes of group management and remote work by several people? From the results of this observation of collective practices in design, this article allows one to highlight the real needs of the agencies and to help their teamwork. These needs consist of: 1) facilitating reflection, 2) managing changing dynamics, 3) allowing the reflective exploration by several persons between space and time, and finally 4) guaranteeing a common progressive and exploratory strategy between actors whose expertise and commitment differ within the same process. Keywords-collaborative design; professional practice; observations; tools and processes. I.