Facilitating Consensus in Cooperative Design Processes using animation-based sketching

Abstract

In the following paper we show how animation can be used as a digital sketching tool to facilitate cooperative work processes when exploring the application of non-idiomatic digital technologies. Focus is on the early stages of the design process, framed as ‘product formation’. Based on the results from a action research case study at the North Sea Oceanarium we show that animation can act as a tool to create clear representations of the quality criteria at hand, and thus enable a richer feedback loop between the different stakeholders in the design process. The main contribution is an examination of how animation can be applied as a cooperative temporal sketching tool for establishing representations of different aspects of a design, and how it can facilitate consensus between stakeholders in the design project. We propose a set of guidelines for choosinganimation-based sketching in cooperative design processes, and detail how the techniques differs from other representational options in the early design process