An overview of cognitive factors in distributed design

Engineering design is being carried out by distributed design teams in an effort to use expert human resources more efficiently. Efforts to support distributed teams often neglect cognitive factors such as the social functions being fulfilled and limitations in the ability of humans to perceive, contextualise, process and recall information. The support needs of distributed design are reviewed from this cognitive viewpoint using five broad categories: design methodology, collaboration, teamwork, knowledge management, design representation