Creating shared design thinking process for collaborative design

Shared understanding about both the design content and the design process has significant meaning for collaborative design, which influences the quality of final products. Existing approaches have difficulties in supporting designers to structure and share their design thinking while they are performing practical tasks. In this paper we propose Shared Design Thinking Process Model (S-DTPM) to support collaborative design, which is based on co-evolutionary design theory and existing design rationale frameworks. Two principles for S-DTPM have been considered. The elements and representation schema of S-DTPM have been discussed in detail. Based on S-DTPM, a prototype system has been developed for supporting collaborative thinking and capturing shared design rationale. An example, collaborative design is taken to validate the proposed model. S-DTPM can help designers to create shared understanding about the design as well as record shared design thinking process for future use such as design review, design change and redesign.