Comparing Immersion in Remote and Local Collaborative Ideation through Sketches: A Case Study

摘要

Sketches are used in design to support ideation, communication, and collaboration because of their abstraction, ambiguity and inaccuracy. Design collaboration using freehand sketches is possible through whiteboard software over Internet. Although designers can co-design and share design referents through this tool, their sketch retains the same scale problems as on paper : by not being confronted to life-size representations, designers can cheat themselves while sketching without references, by distorting perspective views. In 2007, we developed a system (Hybrid Ideation Space-HIS) that allows designers to be physically immersed in their sketches and physical models, literally inside their life-size, real-time representations while sharing them remotely to another HIS. This paper presents a case study comparing the HIS and a whiteboard software (Vyew?) in local and remote design collaboration. With this initial observation, we wanted to see if immersion benefits to collaborative ideation. Three methodological tools were used : the Design Flow pertaining to the designers' experience, the Collaborative Ideation Loop (CI-Loop) for the design collaboration process and the NASA TLX to measure the workload. The local collaboration results show a benefit from immersion while remote results were mitigated because of participant issues.