A Communication Audit for Design

Research Theme: Process Management

This research project has developed a method for the systematic assessment of communication in design. The method also elucidates ways of improving communications.

Both theory and practice of communication have underpinned the method development.

The resulting audit tool is being tested and improved through industrial case studies.

Motivation

In the literature and in industrial practice, communication has been identified as a major determinant for project success or failure. Communication processes need to be taken into consideration before introducing any kind of tool to enhance collaborative design.

Objectives

  • Increase understanding and awareness of communication processes in academiaand industry.
  • Develop a theoretical framework and practical method for understanding communicationpatterns and diagnosing communication problems.
  • Diagnose the 'current state' of communication and identify the 'desiredstate' of communication in a design team.
  • Produce a prototype audit tool for assessing and improving communicationsin design.

Method

A literature review of design and other disciplines give a theoretical base to the research; observational studies and interviews in industry captured practical issues. Industry workshops in form of structured group and individual interviews were used as part of the development process for the method. The method developed to conduct the sessions was inspired and informed by gap analysis and a maturity grid approach (see below).

Findings

A prototype communications audit tool has been developed and used in industrial workshops. Feedback from the workshops suggests that a gapanalysis of current and desired communication practices is useful to plan actions for improvements. The workshop sessions also provide a way of raising designer's awareness of communication issues.

Details

Maturity models to assess a process originated from Quality Management. The basic assumption is that to improve product quality, the quality of the process must be improved. This project takes this further, starting with the assumption that in order to improve the process communication must be improved.

An assessment through a maturity model is structured around a matrix or grid which creates a series of cells by allocating levels of maturity against several key aspects or key activities. The cells contain text descriptions of typical performance at different levels of granularity. Maturity, literally meaning 'ripeness', conveys the notion of development from an initial to a more advanced state.

Through empirical studies and consultation of the literature, key factors which influence communication practices are selected and different scores allocated. These key factors in turn can be broken down into sub-factors. As an example, the factor 'awareness' can be subdivided into awareness of 'sequence of tasks in a process', 'people involved', 'handover of tasks', 'code changes', 'changes in drawings', or 'organisational changes' (see figure opposite). The descriptions in the cells give the participants in a workshop an indication as to what the individual stages mean.

The last two columns in the grid (see figure) will be filled in by the participants in the workshop. This results in a clear picture of how the designers view the current situation and how the 'desired' situation might look. The resulting gap-analysis provides a basis for further action planning.

Acknowledgements

  • Support for this project is provided by several industrial collaborators, the EPSRC and the DAAD.

Selected Publications

  • MAIER, A.M., ECKERT, C.M. and P.J.CLARKSON (2006) 'Identifying requirementsfor communication support: A maturity grid-inspired approach', Expert Systemswith Applications, November 2006, Vol.31, no.4, pp.663-672. Available from Elsevier.
  • MAIER, A.M., ECKERT, C.M. and P.J.CLARKSON (2005) 'A Meta-Model for Communicationin Engineering Design', CoDesign, December 2005, vol.1, no.4, pp.243-254.
  • ECKERT, C.M., MAIER, A. and C. McMAHON (2005) 'Communication in Design'in Clarkson, P.J. and Eckert, C.M. (eds) (2005) 'Design process improvement- a review of current practice', London, Springer.
  • MAIER, A.M., KREIMEYER, M., LINDEMANN, U. and CLARKSON, P.J. (2009) 'ReflectingCommunication: a key factor for successful collaboration between embodimentdesign and simulation', Journal of Engineering Design, May 2009, vol. 20, no.3, pp.265-287. Available from Taylor & Francis.