Communication between people is commonly thought to play a major role in determining the success or failure of collaborative design projects. We conducted 8 weeks of observation and 62 interviews in three design companies. Our findings indicate that communication is blamed for causing many problems which are not of obvious technical nature. However, such problems are more often symptomatic of underlying factors related to information, representation, individual, team, and organisational issues. Examples of factors influencing communication at interfaces are people's understanding of the ‘sequence of tasks’ or ‘goals and objectives’ in the design process. With a system-theory informed conceptualisation of communication, we propose that awareness of such factors could assist design practitioners in targeting interventions and researchers in generating hypotheses about communication and design performance.

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Healthcare systems are under strain, this creates a challenge for designers to develop solutions for better health and care delivery. This paper presents a sandbox of illustrative design themes used to improve health systems based on state of the art research projects. These were collated from presentations at The Second International Meeting on Healthcare Systems Design Research, held at DTU-Technical University of Denmark. Attending groups were mapped based on their research keywords, target journals and methodologies in order to gain insight on the communities research landscape.

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In any process modelling exercise, questions arise regarding how to maximise the utility of that intervention. This paper describes the utility of modelling as the quality of process regulation it enables and, drawing on established principles of cybernetics, analyse the concept of modelling utility to explain the role of modelling in regulating PD processes. We use this analysis to identify opportunities for researchers and practitioners to improve PD process modelling practice.@en

The need for integration of computer-aided design and computer-aided engineering environments stems from the business priority to reduce product cycle times. It is exacerbated by the coexistence of two different paradigms: a topological one in embodiment design and a functional one in simulation. This dualism places increasing demands on human communication between design and simulation engineers. This paper claims that reflecting communication is a key factor for successful collaboration. Reflection is used in both senses of the Latin word 'reflectare': to trigger active thinking about and consideration of communication, as well as to mirror perceptions of a given situation by people collaborating. The paper reports on the development and application of a maturity-grid approach to diagnose the current and desired states of communication between design engineers and simulation engineers in the car body development of a German automotive manufacturer. Results include three themes: one, the importance of understanding of the collaborators'information needs; two, the importance of orientation, e.g., indicated by the engineers' overview of sequence of tasks in the design process; and three, the importance of reflection.@en