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Inhabiting the information space : Paradigms of collaborative design environments

The notion of information space (iSpace) is that a collective context of
transmitters and receivers can serve as a medium to share, exchange,
and apply data and knowledge between a group of human beings or
software agents. Inhabiting this space requires a perception of its
dimensions, limits, and an understanding of the way data is diffused
between inhabitants.
One of the important aspects of iSpace is that it expands the limits of
communication between distributed designers allowing them to carry
out tasks that were very difficult to accomplish with the diverse, but
not well integrated current communication technologies.
In architecture, design team members, often rely on each others'
expertise to review and problem solve design issues as well as interact
with each other for critic, and presentations. This process is called
Collaborative Design. Applying this process of collaboration to the
iSpace to serve as a supplementary medium of communication,
rather than a replacement for it, and understanding how design team
members can use it to enhance the effectiveness of the design process
and increase the efficiency of communication, is the main focus
of this research.
The first chapter will give an overview of the research and define the
objectives and the scope of it as well as giving a background on the

evolving technological media in design practice. This chapter will also
give a summary of some case studies for collaborative design projects
as real examples to introduce the subject.
The second chapter of this research will study the collaborative design
activities with respect to the creative problem solving, the group
behaviour, and the information flow between members. It will also
examine the technical and social problems with the distributed collaboration.
The third chapter will give a definition of the iSpace and analyze its
components (epistemological, utilitarian, and cultural) based on research
done by others. It will also study the impact of the iSpace on
the design process in general and on the architectural product in
particular.
The fourth chapter will be describing software programs written as
prototypes for this research that allow for realtime and non-realtime
collaboration over the internet, tailored specifically to suit the design
team use to facilitate distributed collaboration in architecture. These
prototypes are :
1. pinUpBoard (realtime shared display board for pin-ups)
2. sketchBoard (realtime whiteboarding application with multisessions)
3. mediaBase (shared database management system)
4. teamCalendar (shared interactive calendar on the internet)
5. talkSpace (organized forums for discussions)

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9808
Date11 1900
CreatorsShakarchī, ʻAlī
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
RelationUBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/]

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