Collaborative design: what is it?-Thomas Kvan

414( )T. KÕanrAutomation in Construction 9 2000 409–415From this review, we see that collaboration is adeeper, more personal synergistic process and theterm should be used selectively. Perhaps we shouldrefer to our field as ‘‘co-operative design’’, recognisingthat the design process itself is one of negotiation,agreement, compromise, satisficing in order toachieve success. We might even talk about ‘‘compromiseddesign’’ at the risk it might imply thewrong thing. I suspect again that we collaborate farless often than we pretend to. We focus on collaboration,failing to distinguish that act from co-operation,diminishing the usefulness of this looser coupling.Most design projects bring teams into a relationshipwhich fits Mattessich and Monsey’s definition ofco-operation or co-ordination more closely than itfits their definition of collaboration. Computer systemswhich support co-operative design can beloose-coupled components which allow for differentsystems and are reliant on a variety of communicationchannels. In a pursuit of systems for collaborativework, we risk over-emphasising particularfeatures which may not be needed. For example,synchronicity may be unnecessary for much co-operativework. In place of striving for closer coupling ofsystems and tasks, we should perhaps pay greaterattention to work processes which are needed tocreate the environment for successful co-operation orcollaboration. We cannot expect to create such anenvironment simply with hardware and softwaretools. An over-reliance on tools can only lead to lessthan cost effective use of our resources.Referenceswx 1 R.M. Abarbanel, E. Brechner, W. McNeeley, Fly thru theBoeing 777, in: M.L. Maher, J.S. Gero, F. 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