Searching Requirements for a System to Support Cooperative Concept Design in Product Development Tuomo Tuikka HCI&Group Technology Laboratory Department of Information Processing Science University of Oulu Oulu, Finland tel:+358-(0)8-5531900
[email protected] ABSTRACT
This paper addresses a systems design problem of what kind of support for cooperative concept design could be incorporated into a virtual reality prototyping system. We have studied and analysed how cooperative concept design is conducted in a series of multidisciplinary design meetings. This paper collects the analysis of that material and three interviews conducted simultaneously in industrial setting. The efforts of multidisciplinary designers in search toward a common understanding of the product concept during design process are reported. Thus, work done on the product concept and on coupling different interdisciplinary perspectives are studied. It is shown, e.g., that the concept can deviate very much in the early stages of concurrent engineering process. A lot of work is also required to manage the complexity of design and differing opinions of the goal. An understanding of how cooperation in these meetings was organized is presented with implications to further research with requirements of virtual reality prototyping systems. Keywords
Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Concept Design, Product Development, Virtual Prototyping INTRODUCTION
Designing a new computer system is an intense and incremental work process (Brooks 1982; Brooks 1987), where one must consider, e.g., potential users, requirements, feasibility, costs and time. To understand requirements for computer supported concurrent engineering in product development we need to study this kind of work situations in practice. Preferably, a systems designer should participate to actual engineering to be able to foresee possibilities of new computer techniques. Our group is participating in a larger research project to study and promote virtual reality prototyping technology in Finnish industry. The focus of our current work is in computer support for concept development phase when developing small hand held devices such as mobile
telephones. Concept design is that early phase of product design where uncertainty characterizes the work and many views exist of the future product. Different methods, such as QFD (Day 1993), are used to structurize that work. We consider virtual reality prototyping as one potential computerized tool for supporting concept design work. This paper discusses how design is conducted in a concept design situation in electronics industry. Consequently, we are able to delineate what issues are important when matching concept design work with the support possibilities of virtual reality prototyping technology. We have studied a series of product design meetings. The purpose of the meetings was to "invent" a product as a public pilot, to be demonstrated with a virtual reality prototyping system developed at VTT Electronics in Oulu, Finland. For information dissemination purposes a public pilot project was found to be necessary, because industrial products are usually kept in secrecy before they are released. Furthermore, the design process is also a well-kept secret in electronics industry. The result of the meetings was that a concept of pen shaped telephone was developed and selected to be the "product"of the project. Three meetings were videotaped and taperecorded. This material was analyzed with studying breakdowns and transition points in discussions. Accordingly, here we will present how cooperative design occurred and what issues affected the design process. The analysis and result is not only based on our video material but also to three interviews concerning design in an industrial setting. Interviews are used as a background material. Nature of the domain
It is obvious that modern product development of electronic hand held devices is a team effort where interdisciplinary involvement of participants is evident, e.g., in mobile telephone design as (Ulrich and Eppinger 1995) characterizes the industrial designers work:"the industrial designers must continue to work closely with engineering and manufacturing personnel throughout the subsequent product development process." Different perspectives do cause a certain amount of uncertainty to how the product is understood. Uncertainty characterizes the process also in situations where the object of development is not clear. Consequently, it is possible that discussions of the product are biased according to different values, organizational
position etc. of participants, making the process more complex. Characteristics of complexity as delineated by (Woods 1988), uncertainty, dynamism, mutually interdependent actors, many highly interconnected parts (of a product), appear even in small sized team work when producing hand held electronic devices. Artifacts and prototypes are used to manage the complexity in the process and to clear out the understanding of how the product would work in some specific composition, e.g., a mechanical part where the rest of the product is only a model of surroundings. This means that product development is not only a matter of structuring or decomposing the work properly. In practice, decomposition of work makes distribution inherent to the domain. Nevertheless, design is also a matter of discussions, agreements, pointing out, etc., work which is essential in cooperative situations. Virtual reality prototyping
One major addition of virtual reality prototyping in comparison to CAD technology (Fruchter, Reiner et al. 1995; Maxfield, Fernando et al. 1995; Orogo, Callihan et al. 1995; Schulman 1995) is the functionality of prototypes. Thus, with such a prototype the user can, e.g., make a real phone call. A virtual prototype has been defined by (Haug, Kuhl et al. 1993), and as we also understand it, as a computer based simulation of a prototype system or subsystem with a degree of functional realism that is comparable to that of a physical prototype. Subsequently, virtual prototyping means the process of using virtual prototypes instead of, or in combination with, physical prototypes, for innovation, testing and evaluation of specific characteristics of a candidate design. The interaction between the user and a virtual prototype can base on different kinds of interaction interfaces. A keyboard and a mouse with a conventional window based 2D user interface is the most elementary solution for this. A more sophisticated virtual prototyping environment with 3-D user interface may include e.g. a head mounted display, 3-D position/orientation tracking devices, and auditory as well as haptic feedback devices. The type of representation in a virtual prototyping environment may be spatial, ndimensional with abstract information spaces, or various combinations of video, natural and computer-generated images.(Salmela and Pulli 1997) All in all, it is found out that cooperation in team product development is tight and it can not be articulated with mere document exchange. This is due to extensive unorganised information exchange and need for combining different opinions into a commonly agreed form in a certain time frame. Innovation is inherent in concept design phase. The design group went through an innovation process where history of design, and real existing applications, innovative aspects, solution space and possible solutions were found as resources for work towards a final solution. Also, it is found out that in the process of designing the solution, introducing new members to the team, deviating concept and lack of expert knowledge are main issues causing
communication problems. Different kinds of means are used to manage these situations. Artifacts of different kind, discussions on topics such as similar systems etc. are used for explaining and making interdisciplinary perspectives meet. In the following chapter some background is presented with research approach taken. Next, concept development is discussed gathering the innovation and design issues, as the meetings were structurized. Then, various means to deal with complexity in work process is delineated and finally, lessons learned concludes the paper with commentary of research methods. RESEARCH APPROACH The research material
Our observations base on interviews of three small to medium sized high technology product development companies with customers from industry to consumer markets. The early phase of product design differs from in house development to subcontracting. However, subcontracting is usually a part of larger product development where problems of distribution are evident. The interviews were semistructured ranging from 1 to 8 hours. Each of the interviewees were an elementary part of product development from their own discipline including following engineering perspectives: industrial designer, computer engineer, mechanical engineer. This material has been used here in this presentation as a background material, i.e, as a criteria of relevance, for studying the development of public pilot. Public pilot is the concept which was designed in concept design meetings and ended up to be a pen shaped mobile telephone. Virtual prototyping technology was not used in these meetings. Three design meetings were videotaped and taperecorded resulting to 12 hours of material for further analysis. The material was studied and analysed. This research work can be related to work research conducted in order to support systems development and approaches such as ethnographically-informed systems design from, e.g., (Bentley, Rodden et al. 1992), (Lewis, Mateas et al. 1996). The pen shaped mobile telephone was designed during autumn '96. This artifact was neither meant to be a commercial product nor a final product design with all the elements included. For example space requirements of the electronics were considered, but no detailed design of electronical devices were developed. The original reason for this work was the secrecy of product development projects in industry, real design cases and prototype examples from industry were not allowed for publication. Furthermore, the pilot prototype was meant to be used as an example with the virtual prototyping system developed at VTT Electronics (Pulli, Salmela et al. 1996; Pulli, Salmela et al. 1996; Salmela and Pulli 1997). The design of the public pilot was mainly done by industrial designers, who basically defined the characteristics of the pilot. An electrical engineer simulated customer requirements by introducing target groups and their specific demands. Consequently, customer requirements were not 'real' in the sense of real product
development, a fact which could be considered harmful for the observation and analysis. However, in the interview it was found out that there are cases when a customer company does not even know the exact goal while ordering work from subcontractor. Considering this we basically knew where to aim, i.e., as much as in this kind of concept development situations is possible in general. The arrangement of actors and their diversified background in the meetings is illustrated in figure 1.
Industrial Designer
Industrial Designer
Industrial Designer
Researcher
Customer (Electrical engineer)
Electrical engineer
Pool of communication to cooperate and articulate work
Figure 1: Arrangement of diverse actors in the concept development meetings. Researchers role was both to observe and study the team during the meetings and take part to the general concept idea generation phase. The reason for not only observing but also participating into the design process was that a better understanding of the design work would then be achieved. The pool of communication (dotted area) illustrates all the communication whether, e.g., pointing or task coordination work done during the meetings. Thus, it covers articulation work and all the gestures and clues, such as documents, tables in a computer etc. needed for members to understand each other. Many design sketches were produced during the design process. Figure 2 shows one of the resulting solutions, which could be an example object for discussions with a customer. Virtual prototype would then be able to visualize e.g., the shape, color, different objects such as buttons, functionality of buttons or a connection to real telephone net, display.
Final design of a mobile pen shaped Courtesy of J-P Metsävainio Design Oy.
Figure 2: telephone.
Some concepts
In order to study and analyse a case one needs a perspective. If we would study coordination we should consider theories such as coordination theory (Malone and Crowston 1990). However, information is exchanged intensely in concept design situation and studying how things are coordinated would not reveal many dimensions of the design work. Again, as a systems developer, thinking of only coordination would restrict the mind to a certain support
type. Basically we wanted to find out how the participants not only coordinate tasks but also explain their perspectives in design situations. Concept design is inherently very intense cooperation where multiple actors are required to do the work and are mutually dependent in their work (cf. (Schmidt 1994)). Especially, (Schmidt 1994) has suggested analytical distinction between cooperative work and articulation work in order to be able to conceptualize and specify the support requirements of cooperative work. An example of cooperative work is a hot rolling mill, where the cooperation occurs, e.g., when different states of the mill require attention during the work process. A prototype is an object through which cooperative work occurs. However, cooperation is more than following the states of the prototype, evolving concept requires constant design and active participation to the process. Thus, the participation to the design is not predetermined, but more part of the innovation process. In fact we would benefit of studying the concept as an object in the common field of work of the designers (Schmidt 1994). "A common field of work is constituted by the fact that multiple actors are interdependent in their work. In other words, they are working 'in' the same field of work', that is, they are transforming and controlling of mutually interacting objects and processes. Thus, all cooperative work involves, and indeed, is based upon interaction through changing the state of a common field of work. What one actor — A — is doing is of importance to B and C in doing their work." (Schmidt 1994) Articulation work has been suggested as an approach for CSCW by (Schmidt and Bannon 1992). Due to the underlying and constitutive interdependence, a cooperative effort involves a number of secondary activities of coordinating and integrating cooperative relationships. The cooperating actors have to articulate (divide, allocate, coordinate, schedule, mesh, interrelate, etc.) their individual activities (Strauss 1985; Gerson and Star 1986; Schmidt 1994). Articulation work involves a countless number of interactional activities that are meshed fluently in many ways. Considering these concepts from systems development perspective of a virtual prototyping system, it would be very useful to study what are the perspectives of participants to the common object. The problem is that in innovation process the designers do not know themselves what is the object. Actually, that is the point of the whole design process, to seek the answer to the question: what the product is. Also, the prototype is generated together with each individual bringing input to the process. This leaves us with the only way to seek ways for computer support, how are the different perspectives articulated between the actors. Tools for analysis
It occurs that the concept is uncertain even in the specification phase. Thus, articulation work is important in all situations of concept design. With selected analytical
tools we should be able to distinguish what situations would best illustrate where articulation occurs. We have studied concept design by pointing out breakdown situations, i.e., the situations where an uncertainty of common goal has arisen and noticed and articulation work is required for managing the situation. By studying the interactional activities during the meetings we should be able to delineate an understanding of interactions needed for the product design to proceed. The focus is on peoples activities on reaching a suitable solution and determining that the product is final (Tuikka 1994). This, of course, does not mean that the final product is optimal or the best. Another tool that was thought useful for pointing out events for analysis was to observe transition points. These we call those points where we can see that the product has changed its form considerably in the discussion. The idea for this was inspired by (Ancona and Caldwell 1990) who refer to transitions points as events which mark major shifts in the activities of team members, dividing the product development process into three phases: creation, development and diffusion. We use this concept more subtly and expect to get information how the product develops and what issues lead to a change and innovation. The transition points can be interwoven to the breakpoints but not necessarily since transitions can occur without problems. Thus we are able to map also 'good' events, not only 'bad'. CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AS TEAM WORK
The purpose of concept development meetings is to dig up the characteristics of a product (concept) in a way that all participants are somewhat satisfied on the result. The overall goal is there for all participants regardless of all the means and methods used including computing equipment. This can be highlighted with following quote from an interview: "It must still be reminded that all this computer equipment is not the purpose of our work, but the purpose is to produce a product." We will now discuss how a concept design evolved in a sequence of meetings. Meetings followed an ongoing cycle of innovation and design focusing more and more to the final solution. Instead of detailed descriptions of the material we will go into the results of what caused the breakdowns in the meetings and how these situations were solved. Also, how changes happened, i.e., what lead to new innovations, how people communicated their perspectives is presented. Innovation
First part of public pilot design meetings can be characterized more as an innovative step toward the goal than a design step. We outlined an innovation cycle where any of the elements can be brought up at any moment. This was a phase where rapid innovation occurred. Although the goal of the whole work was rather clear, to produce a prototype of a phone, the form, possible users and use, and how to proceed with this idea were not settled. We can illustrate this step with figure 3 which is a generalization of this session. This figure shows an
illustration of how the transitions generally occurred in innovative discussions. Here we distinct 5 different changes of point in the session discussions, which are in no hierarchical order and jumping from one stage to any other is possible. Reality History
Time
Innovation
Solution space
Possible solution
Solution
Time
Figure 3: This figure illustrates the innovation process of first meeting. The following sequence of explanation is in left to right order for convenience reasons. Reality, history illustrates how the participants were referring to the history of inventions and real applications of techniques. Examples of these are real/historical inventions such as head set telephones used by travel agency clerks, miniature telephones in a tooth filling used by children's of Hollywood stars, to radio with mechanical power supply, or a wrist phone. Innovation arose from historical ideas or ideas which come during discussion of solutions or plainly from somewhere else. Innovation means that an idea has formed, such as telephone set with self-fastening microphone and small loudspeaker behind the ear or in the ear. This separate microphone and loudspeaker set can have different kind of implementations, which means wandering in a solution space. Should we put the microphone in blouse or attach it to skin? Who could be the users here, barbers, bikers? Are there different requirements for women? Who could we contact for further information on this? A possible solution could be then an idea which has potential and fits to some of the schemes invented. These possible solutions pop up and for a while look as an good idea. However, counter arguments start to appear. How about regulations? Is this legal? How would people feel of having a loudspeaker under the skin inside their ear? What are the consequences of this solution to society? Since the discussion is free it can start from any point. However, due to the time restrictions there must be a solution which satisfies all in order to be further developed. Thus, someone must take a stand and suggest a solution. A solution which seems to be suitable for the purpose of virtual prototyping, it is feasible, has potential users, etc. determinants that are fulfilled. A final suggestion was a pen shaped mobile telephone. This suggestion was taken as a decision and the tasks were divided in order to introduce first sketches. Industrial designers in our group seemed to brainstorm and draw their
mental image right away to their notebook in order to remember what issues were discussed. Designing a pencil shaped mobile telephone
It seemed that in next two meetings there was a cycle of other level of accuracy, however, generally the problem solving was corresponding to the innovation process. Innovation was characterized more of transitions in discussions than breakdowns. However, breakdowns characterize more the design where the concept should be clear. Here we will distinguish three main issues which cause breakdowns for design discussions. New members. The purpose of the second meeting was to communicate the individual designs and deepen the understanding on possible users of this new device. Two new members were brought into the group in order to contribute to design process with new ideas. However, briefing new members seemed to be a difficult task. The meeting started with an overall discussion what was done and thought to be done with the design. Next a QFDanalysis was presented by an electrical engineer in order to delineate the needs of different user groups, a task agreed upon in the last meeting. The explanation of results from last meeting was not presented clearly. No drawings of the concept were shown in the beginning. Thus, the purpose of the meeting was not evident right away for the new members and lead to questions which had been already presented. This problem was highlighted in the notion of the other new group member with a comment: "I still don't know what is we are aiming at since I have not seen any drawings", a comment which was made when over an hour had been discussed. Consequently, if briefing new members does not succeed there will be misunderstandings and time must be used in order to articulate the goal of the meeting. Also, some of the previous innovation and design decisions had to be revisited. All in all, a common understanding is critical if new people are added to a meeting. If the issues agreed in the previous session are not presented clearly the uncertainty of state of the matters causes extra work as discussions. Also state of the product design, the individual work agreed and done during the phase between meetings, is not clear since no drawings or visual presentation of the progressing work were shown. Deviating concept. Although the concept had been suggested the focus of work was not solved. One place for misunderstanding was if there would be one concept or family of concepts with different features depending on users. It seems that this question was not solved until the end of the design work and the solution was basically that there was still left room for concept changes. Here is also a problem of this research, organized meeting setting, there was no need for clear specification for production. In the last meeting there still was a problem what the concept was. However, in this meeting designers were more concerned on functionality of the pen phone. Many ideas
were illustrated with using pencils in their environment and how the pen phone could be used. A pen phone should be easy to use for, e.g., left handed users or in emergency situations. Many ideas for functionalities were presented and free discussion on them was dominant. However, there was some difficulty in understanding the meaning of presented functionalities. There were at least two situations where the participants brought their own example of, as they saw, the same idea without grasping the point which had been suggested. It seems that ideas confront prejudices of other designers easily. Lack of expert knowledge. Expert knowledge means here the knowledge of some special area. One area pointed out was the knowledge on how to deal with space inside a solution, such as the pen shape, and the electronics to be put in this space. When the group came into a suggestion of a shape they almost always were halted in a situation where more knowledge was required about the engineering possibilities of electronics. Naturally, electronics also affects on the possibilities of shaping the solution and uncertainty of feasibility came up. Expert knowledge was available though. Getting this knowledge required deciding who are contacts outside the team, who is going to contact these people, what is the information needed, when it is needed, i.e., coordination of tasks in between the meetings. In conclusion we can say that these problems are basically caused by uncertainty. Uncertainty of the concept, its relevance and feasibility. All the efforts aim at alleviating the uncertainty and navigating through the constraints of a complex field. MANAGING COMPLEXITY
Different means are used for managing complexity of the field. One way to do this is to structurize the meetings in certain way, as we have seen here, to innovation and design meetings. In this chapter we sum up with the means which characterize and help in communicating the concept design, and relationship between what is individual work and what is collaborative work. Innovation was both individual and collaborative
All the participants bring their own professional traditions and personal abilities to the innovation process. Their views are intermingled with expectations of roles, customers role, innovators role, designers role which must be considered and remembered actively during the session. Innovation comes up from individuals ideas and perceptions. However, collaboration increases the information of history of real applications with implications to the concept. Collaboration increases also the solution space and knowledge for making decisions. Artifactualizing design was individual
Someone must collect the ideas and make conclusions of the discussions, otherwise the work does not move on. Whether design concerns on brainstorming the user groups or making first real design drawings of the options, the work is individual. The clues to this work come from the
group work and therefore key people must be aware of all the discussion toward their role in the group in order to be able to construct their vision individually. Naturally, individual work needs to be communicated to the group when the work has developed to a stage where discussion can be continued. Communication of the individual innovations spontaneous and draws situational resources
was
Relaxed atmosphere is good for bringing forward all possible ideas into common knowledge. Subsequently, allowing spontaneous communication to appear and focusing attention to the idea. Different means for spontaneous communication were used. Obviously, oral communication is the main vehicle for bridging the perspectives. However, different kind of artifacts were used for explaining the possibilities. Simplest and always present, but not an artifact, is space. Of course bodyparts can not be considered as artifacts either although they are used with space or 'air' to show how the concept could function. For example showing how a telephone with a shape of hand, attached to wrist could work. Telephone is not existent but the use can be shown with gestures and shaping hand into the position of use. Pointing existing devices in the room is also common. Everyone forms a mental image of the possible concept although the device could be anything from a cigar to eyeglasses. A slightly modified pencil shape was found useful for mobile telephone. Naturally this eased the demonstration of all the uses since pen is a well known instrument for everyone. Existing ideas to use a pen were discussed variating from pencils with heads of different colors to metal covered clock pencils sold ten years ago. The functionalities implemented to use their features were discussed in detailed fashion. Environment was utilized in various ways to illustrate the use situations. Environment varied from fictitious situations to real physical available resources. For example, taking a pencil into a hand and putting it to a pocket reveals the ease of movement and how to carry the device. How telephone could be changed from left to right hand. How telephone could be pressed inside a purse in emergency to alarm 911 or police, etc. Sketches were done by industrial designers during the session, but mostly as memos. These sketches were a sudden brainstorm of an idea. However, they worked as a medium for an idea mainly between the industrial designers, how to use some design effect to create a feeling of a particular feature such as familiarity, or high tech look. Concept as a token
A trivial point here is that during the meetings everyone had all the time their own vision of the concept, more or less the same as the common concept. However, a concept can also be seen as a token participants pass to each other when changing the turn to speak. Generally, 'token' was taken and something was added to it or a contrary opinion was presented. It occurred that a speaker could say 'I am not finished yet with presenting my
idea' if someone was too eager to interrupt him. Half done explanation could be misinterpreted. Since everyone uses ones own personal resources for interpretation, misunderstandings and not seeing others point may cause tension between participants or may leave some good ideas without proper notice. Thus, passing and receiving a conceptual token is a point where one could study how the concept evolves or does not evolve and how an idea for a concept stays within the group. Apparently, a conceptual token is a way strict enough for the group dynamics to be able develop a concept but also free enough to add everyones opinions to it. Finally, though, a product is an important constrain to the concept and focusing the group to suitable and feasible ideas. Communication on the state of the affairs is necessary
As we discussed earlier one of the main problems of uncertainty is that participants do not know the aim or where the work is going on. Thus, it is important that both individual work and teams work is communicated to the participants. State of the affairs was communicated in our test team mostly orally. There were neither any structured way for information exchange before the meetings nor collection of action points or decisions after the meetings. This seemed to confuse at some point where the team is going. Catching up with the ongoing work, especially for the new members, then depends on the experience, expertise and understanding of the process and subject. Since communication of the state of the affairs is required to include everyone to the process, it will also take time. The amount of time spent depends on how this communication succeeds. Communicating individual work was done in a more structured way since in these cases someone was responsible of the vision. Since a computer was used we needed to change room so that all could see the screen. Tables and lists were used to structure the information appropriately to ease the presentation. All of these elements were also important for the concept and segmented the focus groups that could be using the product. At this point the concept was already fixed to a pen shaped mobile telephone, but the users would focus the functionalities and looks of the product. However, all of the group did not know what the concept was exactly since they were not present in the previous meeting, causing confusion of the work steps taken. Drawings visualized the concept to a product. Visualization clearly focused the discussion to the visible object. How this object could be used with this and this kind of functionality, for example: what if we think of hanging the telephone as a necklace. Also major flaws or misinterpretations of the groups individual understanding were exposed such as will the pencil have all the functionalities of a telephone or not. As a matter of fact this was the main point of the concept during all three meetings and was commonly agreed only in the end when a visualisation was introduced.
LESSONS LEARNED
For the first, it seems that design meetings are necessary for concept design, due to intense communication any other way would be less efficient than a design meeting with all the actors in a same room with tight cooperation and rapid and diversified information exchange. Also, innovative and seemingly unorganised concept design work cannot be formalized. The constraints here were mainly the original vision of the product and schedule limitations, causing task coordination to get the work done. The second observation is the difficulty of communication and the crucial role of different resources and mediating artifacts. In the innovation phase different kind of resources were used in order to aid in explaining actors perspectives to the work. We delineated five changes in discussions of innovative design. The participants referred to history of design, and to real existing applications, innovation arose from these or independently, solution space was created for this innovation, a possible solution delineated and it was tested until it was accepted as a solution. Furthermore, different interactional means were used to point out the benefits of actors perspectives. For example, explaining how some earlier design of same kind of product worked would help in a perspective. If this earlier design was available at the situation, it was easy to point out the good or bad ideas. 'Air' was constantly used medium for showing how the design could be used, lifting an imaginary telephone towards the ear. Surrounding environment, e.g., pocket, could be used for demonstrating how the concept would fit into it. In design, artifacts, such as design drawings, are means for explaining perspectives when some point has been reached in discussions. Sketches are discussed, pointed at and used for producing alternative solutions. Also, tables in a computer or a ballpoint pen in various uses help in showing what the properties the product could have. Implications
For the first, being more informed of the concept design work, how should we start the search for requirements for virtual prototyping system? Due to the possibility to quickly construct, visualize and functionally illustrate a concept, a virtual prototype could be a more focused artifact for discussions. However, the concept design presented here would imply areas for computer support to innovation support, saving the decision and process history, visualization of the object and alternatives, functional visualizations of the concept in use and in different environments. Generally, a virtual prototype in a virtual prototyping system could be seen as a common object of work. It would be an object for discussions and the virtual prototyping system would offer various services depending on what previously mentioned issues were valued in that particular context. Also, a virtual prototype could be seen as a mean for communication whether informing new members of a team, providing awareness inside and outside the group, simultaneously discussing the concept in different geographical locations, or commenting the design.
Again, in these situations services of the virtual prototyping system depend on the context where it is used. Furthermore, the prototype is dependent on other objects of the field, the information of available solutions in electronics design, and in some situations of the costs of components. Naturally, the participants in a meeting must still coordinate their tasks and the group should be aware of them. Second, there are theoretical implications of concept design work to the understanding of cooperative work and articulation work. The objects in this common field of work, where the actors were interdependent of each other, were mainly conceptual. The designers first problem was that what actually is the object to be mutually understood and discussed. Thus, what one actor is thinking — not doing — is of importance to another actor, otherwise problems occur. These conceptual objects do not have a form until they are visualized. Also, it is argued that they cannot be properly understood until a visualization is introduced. Articulation work in the sense of articulating individual activities was necessary, but additionally various interactional activities and means were required to mesh the individuals understandings into a common goal. Figure 4 illustrates how differing individual perspectives of the object are meshed with interactional activities such as discussions, or by coordinating design tasks. Different artifacts are used to explain different perspectives and common object is the concept which can deviate when combining the many perspectives. Individual perspectives Meshing the individual perspectives 1
Deciding solutions Consultation of experts 2
Task coordination Discussions of state of the affairs
3
Artifacts
Discussing possible solutions
Discussion of other concepts, ideas
Drawings Ballpoint pen Environments of use, shirt, eye-glasses etc.
Common object
Figure 4: Illustration of individual perspectives and interactional activies for meshing these understandings with the aid of artifacts. Common object is the target concept which is realized in prototypes. Research method
The used research method and conceptual tools selected for analysis were useful in illustrating how the concept design was conducted. Breakdowns occurred in discussions when the objective of work was not clear. Many different kinds of means to manage the unclear situations were raised, e.g., explaining perspectives with examples familiar to everyone. Transition points in discussions helped in finding changes on the concept design thus revealing how the concept has evolved during the innovative sessions.
The secrecy reasons of high technology product development forced us to organize and study a series of arranged design meetings which had neither commercial constraints nor 'real' interaction between different disciplines. Considering this, following limitations must be taken into consideration. •Connection outside the design team cannot be studied properly with this meeting arrangement and should be studied with a real development team in order to understand how their cooperation occurs. •Customer information is important for real product development. Incorporating real customer information into the product development is essential in industrial setting. •Our design meetings were probably too simple for deep conclusions of interdisciplinary design work. All the interest groups were not present. Also, artifacts required for coordination in complex design work was not shown here, although, from the interviews surely complex organizations use various artifacts for stipulating and mediating coordination (cf. (Sørensen, Carstensen et al. 1994)). FUTURE WORK
This work will lead us further towards requirements. There are two possibilities to continue our field research and introduce a real context to the requirements gathering; to study in house product development or companies doing subcontracting. Research at subcontracting and networking companies seems right now interesting, but then it is necessary to put more weigth on how distribution affects the requirements. Research methods such as interactional analysis (Jordan and Henderson 1994) could add more information on how people use the artifacts in design and what should be supported by the virtual prototyping systems. At some stage of our work we must also consider how to computer support interdisciplinary, geographically distributed communication and customer feedback by combining ideas from fields as Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Virtual Reality Systems. For example, systems supporting cooperation, such as BSCW (Bentley, Busbach et al. 1996), usually provide different ways of organizing information to help a group of people to reach a common understanding of work. Virtual reality, virtual environments (Bullock and Mariani 1995) and mixed reality (Benford, Brown et al. 1996) are raising more interest also in the World Wide Web community. However, no solutions exist to support communication in product design with virtual reality prototyping in a distributed design situation through Internet. We will do incremental constructive work simultaneously with field work. In distributed situation the benefits of a virtual prototyping system and virtual prototypes can be of great importance for product design. Although the requirements depending on the context will more or less change compared to a non distributed situation, the problems presented here are probably worse in a distributed situation. There virtual prototyping technology can be useful in comparison with drawings or CAD models.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank all our industrial and research partners, J-P Metsävainio Design Oy, C3 Suunnittelu Oy, Polar Electro Oy and CCC Software Professionals, VTT Electronics for your time spent with interviews, exposing your product development to research and participating the meetings. Thanks are also due to TEKES, Finnish Technology Development Centre for funding this research, to Marjo Favorin for discussions and cooperation in collecting the research material, Dr. Kari Kuutti for giving constructive comments on my text and to participants of Kilpisjärvi Information Systems Seminar for fruitful comments and discussions. REFERENCES
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