Online Collaborative Sketching and Communication to Support Product Ideation by Design Teams
Published in In the proceedings of Cross-Cultural Design, HCII2023, 2023
Abstract: In recent decades, the team creative process has been shifting online. Many design teams for novel products work together via collaborative software or applications. When generating new ideas, team members sketch to express their ideas and discuss them with each other. However, access has yet to be effectively supported by the current communication tools or creativity support tools online. Therefore, this study aims to clarify the needs of design teams, when they ideate new products online and sketch collaboratively, and the required features of tools to support this process. We conducted individual in-depth interviews with six designers from different design teams in China to identify needs. In addition, after the first two interviews, we demonstrated a preliminary design prototype with potentially useful features for collaborative ideation. The last four interviews also included a heuristic evaluation of the design. The results suggested that design teams working online had several barriers to co-creativity, including collaboration in batches, untransparent processes, and inefficient visual expression. We outlined the features required in an online collaborative tool for product design: integration of creative teamwork and taskwork, version control and visualization, and efficient toolsets.
Recommended citation: Yuting Ye, Hongkun Tian, Tianhang Pei, Yuxin Luo, Yue Chen, "Online Collaborative Sketching and Communication to Support Product Ideation by Design Teams." In the proceedings of Cross-Cultural Design, 2023.
Download Paper