Computer-Mediated Communication in Consumer Product Development: A Case Study

Consumer product development (CPD) is a process of collaborative work and group communication, and also the one full of graphs and shapes. With the permeation of computer and Web technologies, the formed communication models in CPD are changing observably. So, how we can transmit and retrieve the vision information accurately, efficiently and naturally by the computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the focus of this article. A case is studied to prove our supposition that four factors decide the effect of CMC: vision information itself, tasks, media´s richness and organizations´ characteristics. This article also gives some advice for how to choose the efficient media in main phases. It is an interesting and innovative exploration into CPD based on CMC.