An Exploratory Study to Fill the Gap Between Co-Design Tools and Industrial Applications

This paper deals with the application of remote collaborative environments in product design, in particular for design review activities. In this context, companies actually face some troubles: limited knowledge about available tools, difficulty in coming to know and using innovative systems, and complexity in evaluating the impact of the technology on design collaboration. The present research suggests a novel collaborative environment (the CoReD platform) that merges system simplicity, project-oriented approach and customizable functions. It defines a metric-based protocol considering both performances and cognitive aspects to assess collaboration quality and then monitors design review sessions within three industrial Consortia. Research contributions are to answer two main questions: how to arrange a low-cost co-design environment and how to effectively evaluate the human-system interaction and collaborative performance in industrial use. Experimental results highlight that the CoReD platform is able to efficiently improve collaborative processes by affecting both product-process performance and human-based collaboration, mainly thanks to: system architecture simplicity, low cost, high customizable functionalities and ease of use for remote design. However, results demonstrate also that significant advantages can be achieved only if industrial partners have a good level of technical expertise and high motivation to collaborate each other.