Social aspects of collaborative design

Collaborative design is a complex process being carried out by distributed teams. Collaboration requires successful and efficient sharing of knowledge, negotiation, coordination and management of activities. In distributed environments, design members are moving to network forms through alliances and other collaborative relationships as a social network. This paper explores collaborative design process from a sociological viewpoint. A social factor-based architecture for collaborative design is investigated, with special attention given to patterns of social behavior and the organizations of those who participate in the design. Social factors thought to have played a role include perspectives, preference, attitudes, cognition, etc. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce a methodology for analyzing the social aspects of collaborative design. The paper concludes with directing attention to current challenges and recommendations for research.