Collaborative Design

This professionally oriented course builds on GSD 7320 \”Information Technology in the Design Professions\” and focuses in detail on issues of collaborative design, including global design practice, vertical information links to manufacturers, synchronous and asynchronous cooperation, process modeling and redesign, and human-computer interaction. The continuing computerization of the design professions, and the emergence of networking phenomena such as the Internet and the Web, provide a promising situation for challenging existing ways of design collaboration. Computers are no longer seen as stand-alone drafting machines, but as communication and coordination devices, bringing remote design participants closer together, and making distributed design knowledge accessible instantly. Whether designers will be able to command a leadership role in this emergent networked design practice, will depend much on their ability to connect to this network, and to use it to amplify their design talents. The objectives of this course are: 1. To provide a sound understanding of the basic concepts and tools of networked collaborative design. 2. To develop the ability to control the flow of information across all stages of the building design process using these tools and concepts. The format of the course is a combination of case study discussions with live demonstrations of new collaborative design media, and hands-on work sessions.