Search for: All records

In collaborative systems, both technical and social factors influence decisions. While collaborative options may yield desired outcomes, a lack of understanding between parties can hinder collaboration. Effective communication facilitates information exchange and comprehension of partners' intentions, guiding designers toward collaborative decisions. This study examines the impact of a communication channel designed to share actors' collaboration intentions on the accuracy of information exchange and strategic decisions in a collaborative design process. The research uses secondary data from a human experiment involving a collaborative system design problem to assess the intervention's effects. The experimental procedure involves actors completing 30 paired tasks, earning or losing points based on joint decisions with their partners. Participants represent decision-makers from different car manufacturing companies. The experimental data includes 28 junior-year plus STEM undergraduate and graduate students completing paired decision-making collaborative tasks allowed to exchange verbal information and have an additional communication channel to share intentions. The usage of the communication channel is investigated using multiple statistical tests. Results indicate that actors share their intentions accurately and honestly via the communication channel. Even in inaccurate cases, actors’ decisions shift significantly due to their partner's reported strategic intentions. This research underscores the importance of communication for better management of collaborative systems. 

Understanding design processes and behaviors are important for building more effective design outcomes. During design tasks, teams exhibit sequences of actions that form strategies. This paper investigates patterns of design actions to identify successful design strategies in paired parameter design tasks. The paper uses secondary data from a design experiment in which each pair completes a series of simplified cooperative parameter design tasks to minimize completion time. Analysis of 192 task observations uses principal component analysis to identify design strategies and regression analysis to evaluate their impacts on performance outcomes. Results show that the design strategy of short average action time, small average action size, and low action variation significantly decreases completion time. Discussion of results suggests smaller and more frequent actions provide more rapid feedback about each action to improve communication and understanding between pairs, leading to more efficient design processes. Results show that task order and the number of variables also significantly contribute to performance outcomes, which aligns with past literature. Results also show a negative relationship between lower English ability, experience level, and team performance outcomes. The discussion suggests that lower English ability can be a barrier to communication between pairs, and a lower experience level can decrease the ability to create effective strategies.