Understanding Collaborative Interaction for Varying Product Complexity

Small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) often develop products collaboratively. Significant interaction among designers is critical to the success of any collaborative design session. There exist various tools for remotely located interactions, such as textual, video, audio, screen share modes with varied level of cost; however, often, SMEs are unable to afford them. This work aims to identify the most appropriate mode that are required for a successful collaborative design for a given product complexity. The authors made three categories of collaborative design activity (i.e., designing an existing product, designing an existing assembly of the component, and designing a new product). The authors identified and categorized the appropriate modes of interaction for a particular level of product complexity. They conducted a number of experiments with products of increasing number of feature complexities to identify the minimum facility that a company should have to enable remotely located interactions during product design. Based on the requirement, a company can select the appropriate tool.