Design Team Cognition Across Spaces and Cultures: An Exploratory Protocol Study

While historically the design team was almost always co-located, physically sharing the same space, tools, and systems, over the last few decades, advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have broadened the definitions of collaboration and teamwork, to include a range of Computer-Supported Collaborative Workplaces (CSCW). Such CSCWs have become core to the cognitive and communicative operations of design teams around the world. Furthermore, architectural design education and practice are increasingly reliant on multilingual and multicultural teamwork. Design team cognition (DTC) is central to design teamwork, particularly in a synchronous or asynchronous, distributed environment. However, DTC in remote, diverse collaboration processes is still largely uncharted territory. Thus, this exploratory protocol study (i) captures in-depth cognitive activities related to four DTC levels of online collaboration (visual communication, verbal communication, design coordination, and task coordination), (ii) compares the DTC results of two cultural teams (mono-cultural and cross-cultural) and their patterns over time, and through this, (iii) develops fundamental knowledge about the ways distributed, diverse teamwork settings, enable designers to effectively contribute to a changing global environment.