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UAL Research Online

Accommodating disagreement: a study of effective design collaboration

McDonnell, Janet (2012) Accommodating disagreement: a study of effective design collaboration. Design Studies, 33 (1). pp. 44-63. ISSN 0142-694X

Type of Research: Article
Creators: McDonnell, Janet
Description:

This paper reports an investigation into the verbal interaction between two experienced software designers developing initial ideas for a new software application. Paying attention to the conversational strategies that make manifest the ‘web of moves’ (Schon, 1985) that characterises expert design behaviour, the study focuses on how the designers keep the designing moving on productively despite uncertainties and ambiguities over the brief and disagreement over elements of the design itself. The study examines how tentativeness supports constructive collaboration and draws attention to the conversational strategies used to accommodate disagreement, in particular explicit reference to it and the use of technicalising terms to encapsulate, but acknowledge, differences about how design requirements should be realised. The work contributes to understanding the subtle conversational mechanisms that support effective design collaboration and highlights the need to acknowledge phenomena that serve collaboration itself.

Official Website: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X1100038X
Additional Information (Publicly available):

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Keywords/subjects not otherwise listed: design collaboration, design education, collaborative design, conceptual design, design negotiation, design processes, software design
Publisher/Broadcaster/Company: Elsevier (Cell Press)
Your affiliations with UAL: Colleges > Central Saint Martins
Date: January 2012
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1016/j.destud.2011.05.003
Projects or Series: Research Outputs Review (April 2010 - April 2011)
Date Deposited: 22 Feb 2012 13:19
Last Modified: 08 Oct 2015 05:40
Item ID: 3892
URI: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/3892

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