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Patterns of Silence and Communication Between Paired Designers in Collaborative Computer-Aided Design

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Design Computing and Cognition’20

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Abstract

We present the initial findings of an experiment where designers worked in pairs to complete a series of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tasks via Parallel CAD Control, a working style where both partners are able to simultaneously manipulate, modify and build-on the same part model from their own workstations. We find that the level of communication varies widely amongst the pairs, but equality of communication across the pairs remains relatively even. We unexpectedly find that pairs that include a Novice designer have a relatively lower level of communication, despite maintaining equality of conversation. Finally, we find that participants with high CAD skill use technical CAD words at a relatively lower frequency. These initial experimental findings, analyzed via a limited sample size, motivate research questions for further study, with the potential to eventually inform best practice in collaborative CAD.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you Ready Lab, especially Hamza Arshad and Xiangjiu Wu, for your help with the experiments and data. Thank you to four anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on the paper draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Meaghan Vella & Alison Olechowski

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

    Vrushank Phadnis

Authors
  1. Meaghan Vella
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  2. Alison Olechowski
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  3. Vrushank Phadnis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alison Olechowski .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and School of Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, USA

    John S. Gero

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Vella, M., Olechowski, A., Phadnis, V. (2022). Patterns of Silence and Communication Between Paired Designers in Collaborative Computer-Aided Design. In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition’20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90625-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90625-2_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90624-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90625-2

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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