Experiences with collaborative design by constructing metaphoric objects

This chapter describes a number of initial results of the author’s PhD study entitled: ‘A guide for preparing and facilitating multidisciplinary, collocated design meetings as a means for building design improvement.’ This study consists of the following research tasks: studying what a systematic approach to a design meeting means; studying how a design meeting can be prepared and managed; developing working methods that create and share knowledge and developing a design guide. The design process for a design meeting will be modelled as a collection of related preparatory and design activities, executed by managers, facilitators and designers with the aid of design tools and management plans. The model is based on existing insights and theories of cognitive processes such as perception (verbal, visual and tactile), communication, (creative) thinking, (experiential) learning and (interdisciplinary) collaboration. This study is part of the Strategic Design research programme process cluster of the Knowledge Center for Building and Systems (KCBS), a joint project conducted by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). The center’s mission is to improve insight into the underlying principles of integral design processes to decrease investment risks and ensure the sustainability of buildings.