6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

Schrage explains that a “shared space” is a prerequisite for any type of
collaboration. A shared space is a medium where all participants can
add their notations to the shared understanding that the participants are
trying to create (Schrage quoted in Schulz, 1997). According to
empirical studies, shared understanding is an essential condition for
team design (Valkenburg, 1998). The purpose of a shared space is not
to create a presentation of some finished concept, but rather to allow
the thoughts and works of participants to be understood by their
partners during the process of creation (Schrage quoted in Schulz,
1997).
Communication, coordination, and negotiation are the other related
terms. Communication involves the exchange of information, events
and activities. Effective communication is a necessary, though not a
sufficient condition to meaningful collaboration. Simply publishing
information to a large group of participants does not mean that the
recipients of that information are participating in the process.
Communication has often been a well-known bottleneck in large-scale
complex projects. Costly breakdowns in communications occur regularly
even in the traditional AEC projects of physically collocated teams (Qian
and Gross, 1999). Coordination involves controlling the workflow and
communication process and managing various interdependencies
between activities and events. It allows efficient control mechanisms to
coordinate group effort (Pena-Mora et al., 2000). Finally, negotiation
means compromising when design changes proposed by some team
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