Visual Representation in Design Creative Collaborative Strategies of Remote Sketching on Design Luz-Maria Jimenez-Narvaez and Arturo Segrera Creation of New Fashion Illustration Painting Techniques by Use of India-ink Painting Techniques: Research into Line Drawing Techniques of Expression in Fashion Illustrations Sachiko Nagasawa, Shin’ya Nagasawa and Kazunari Morimoto How Uncertainty Helps Sketch Interpretation in a Design Task Winger S.W. Tseng and Linden J. Ball The Complementary Role of Representations in Design Creativity: Sketches and Models Alejandro Acuna and Ricardo Sosa Creative Collaborative Strategies of Remote Sketching on Design Luz-Maria Jimenez-Narvaez 1,2 and Arturo Segrera 3 1 National University of Colombia, Canada 2 MATI-Montréal, Canada 3 Industrial Design School of Montreal University, Canada Abstract. In this exploratory investigation we present the analysis of creative team strategies of remote sketching used during the meetings of three design teams while interacting with a client that had requested their services for the design of the graphic image of a research laboratory. During the experiment, the groupware softwares for synchronous work, Skype and Vyew, were used. The teams make the selection of the ideas, once these are drafted, in a verbal way. This process involves work cycles in which the nominal work requires verbal communication for the group idea selection; as for the simultaneous work, the audio conference needs to withstand the whole process of group idea formation. Without the synchronous verbal communication, the exchange or the selection of ideas, which will lead to the formation of group ideas, would not be possible. Keywords: creative team strategies, remote sketching, team idea production, remote layout drawing, collaborative design work 1 Introduction 1.1 Analysis of the Generation of Ideas in a Team The generation of ideas is “the ability of the individual to produce ideas expressed in language or other media is an important human characteristic” (Carroll, 1993, p. 394). The quantitative factors of this ability can be summed up in factors such as: “fluidity” and “creativity” (Idem). For Caroll, the term “idea” has a more broad meaning: “an idea can be expressed in a word, a phrase, a sentence, or indeed any verbal proposition, but it may be something expressed in a gesture, a figure, a drawing, or a particular action” (Idem). A creative idea differentiates itself from other expressions because it is neither a process of acknowledgement nor a descriptive process, but manifests itself as a solution to a problem. According to Schneiderman (2000) the creative process of a team is completed when there exists the construction of novel knowledge based on the prior knowledge of the participants. The work of a team would involve communication as the principle medium towards social refinement and the dissemination of ideas. The creativity process of a group has not been described in depth (Paulus and Nijstad, 2003; Taggar, 2002) since the great majority of studies has focused on the individual creativity and the incentives of personal strategies: “your (personal) creative power” (Osborn 1948; and specially Osborn, 1974, p. 66). In design, the Goldschmidt (1995) study evaluated through means of a protocol of parameters of productivity, the individual and group performance during the conception stage of a racing bike. This study demonstrated that the creative work of a group is not necessarily superior to the one of an individual in terms of creative productivity (Lamm and Trommsdorff, 1973). The main difference concerns the reduced time needed to execute complex tasks in which there is no competence between one of the participants. In any case, the group creativity can be described as the sum of individual processes or the result of the social interaction amongst the participants. In general, the teams meet and interact informally during the process of the ideas production and in this process there exists a kind of auto- organized synergy that allows the participants to design as a team. 1.2 Sketching in a Team Arheim (1993) defines two types of visual representations: the mental images produced by memory and those that are generated by abstraction. In team design, the exchanges performed by graphic 242 L.M. Jimenez-Narvaez and A. Segrera representations will be done by means of comparison within the group of layout drawings 1 , the abstract representations and through the images (photos, illustrations, realistic renderings or views of existing objects). These graphic representations turn into a visual language that allows a dynamic collaborative communication. In this article, we will consider the layout draft as a graphic language for the exchange of ideas within the process of group idea conception. This language allows for the adequate tackling and resolution of any design problems. The proposal of sketching as a language of ideas production is analysed by Goldschmidt (1991) starting from verbal protocols carried out by means of observation during the execution of sketches. With this as a starting point, Goldschmidt deduced that the utilization of sketches is an operation of “interactive imagery” (p.131) that generates an internal and an external dialogue of production and evaluation of ideas. The drafts are not pre-established images, but they rather develop “within a context of explanation” (Idem). In addition, the sketch facilitates the explanation of the composition of the object and the interrelation between the parts and its context. The sketching reflects a process of refinement of the ideas, in the sense that the first ideas of the group will be “tentative, generic, and vague”. Subsequently, the sketch becomes specific in a context like Arnheim saids “rather it has the positive quality of a topological shape. As distinguished from geometrical shapes, a topological shape stands for a whole range of possibilities without being tangible committed to anyone of them. Being undefined in its specifics, it admits distortions and deviations. Its pregnancy designer requires in the search for a final shape” (p.71). On this point, Pucell and Gero (1998) emphasize the multidisciplinary use of sketching in all of the phases of a product conception. These authors affirm the variation of the type of the layout draft produced, depending on how advanced the stage of the project is. This way, in the first phases of the definition of a product, the sketches will be vague and undefined. However, once the project is better defined, the 1 A layout drawing corresponds to: “The first step in transition from idea to item is design. Here the engineer (designer) takes the pencilled notes, the scribbles on backs of envelopes, the brainstorm ideas, the design sketches on cafeteria napkins, and weaves them into the first designs of the new device Design begins when the designer makes the first lines that begin to skeletonise the device” (Bronikowski, 1986, p. 387 in Termiun Plus, 2010) industrial drawings, the realistic rendering and the construction plans will be used. Pucell and Gero suggest that sketching has three concrete functions in the process of problem resolution. Sketches perform an interrelation process amongst: “1) short term memory, 2) imagery reinterpretation and 3) mental synthesis” (Ibid). Likewise, Van der Lugt (2005) shows that sketches allow to: 1) support a new cycle of interpretation of the thought, 2) to uphold the reinterpretation of the ideas in group work and 3) improve access to ideas on an earlier stage. Inside the process of the ideation stage and the evolution of the design project (Eastman, 1999), the drawing is accompanied by a description paper with the technical characteristics of the product, whether structural or abstract, such as the mechanical structure, of the “cinematic representations, the systematic force analysis, the structural resistance or the means of assembly” (Shah al., 2001, p. 169) of the products. Presently, there is an ongoing debate on the role of sketching in the process of the conception of ideas in design. Gero, Pucell and Bilda (2006, also see: Gero and Bilda, 2008) propose a new perspective onto the idea production in design, that designers can design without drawing; however, in our article our aim is to understand how teams that work from a distance, share their ideas through the use of remote sketching. Subsequently, we will discuss in more detail our considerations on remote collaborative working. 1.3 Sketching in a Team There are many reasons to evaluate the importance of remote sketching, principally, those related to new working conditions: the delocalization of teams, the interaction with external experts, as well as the other players in the design process: users, providers, to name a few. The evolution of computer technology and communications –ICT allows for a more dynamic exchange of information between all agents involved in the execution of complex projects. Ozkaya and Akin (2005, p.5) explain that “collaborative design implies the collaboration of distinct individuals with different areas of expertise or knowledge to work towards the accomplishment of common goals, simultaneously or chronologically, and co-locationally or remotely”. An extensive part of development in the area of remote creative collaboration, has been dedicated to technologies CAD and technical collaboration (Kalay, 2004), such as, the use of file sharing software. Although in the case of the remote sketching process, we would have to highlight what Kalay explained as, creative collaboration centred around a “process of shared creation, where the exchange de ideas among the participants helps to stimulate and enrich their own Creative Collaborative Strategies of Remote Sketching on Design 243 creativity” (Ibid, p. 405). One of the main considerations one should have in mind concerning working from a distance is the implementation of the layout drawing. The new groupware for online work: the Web conference online programs or “virtual collaborative space”, incorporate an interactive whiteboard that allows users to visualize and share every stroke that a participant performs. We are interested in analysing and verifying the potential of such kind of tools for sketching and communicating from a distance. Team sketching from a distance can be the visual sharing of a digital copy of a pencil made sketch or of a sketch created using specialized design computer software. An outline of project involves a verbal discussion along with the synchronous execution of sketching traces. For the time being, several limitations exist for this type of layout drawings; primarily concerning the preference of designers for the use of hand and paper drafts instead of computer peripherals such as the graphic tablet. As for the use of the interactive whiteboard, teams are not accustomed to sharing simultaneously the visualization and the accompanying explanations of the sketches. In the area of team sketching, individual participation depends on the internalization of personal ideas and the exchange with others, in this case, “the sketches are a useful tool for checking and conveying ideas, for self and others. They also serve as an external display to facilitate inference and discovery, to go from the intended to the unintended, to go from the seen to the unseen” (Tversky, 2002). Heiser al. (2004) also highlights that group sketches “serve as a platform for inference, reasoning and insight” (p.1) and “the virtues of a shared sketch in creating and maintaining common ground and in serving as a joint product should be effective in enhancing collaboration on abstract problems as well as concrete ones.”(p.9). It is important to note that in team sketching the process is focused on the “interaction between participants”, the existence of an evaluation process, and the benefits of collaboration (Ibid). So in other words, the role of sketching in team work is oriented mainly towards: Exploring and triggering the iterations of individual or group ideas in the dynamics of the design process; Encouraging communication between participants about the graphic externalization of the first ideas without a clear verbal explanation. (See the work of Nagai and Noguchi, about the transformation of key words into images 2003; 2008). Highlighting and evaluating graphic proposals developed by the group. Although there are other creative techniques fundamental to collaborative design work, such as, c- Sketch by Shah al. (2001) or Brainsketching by Van der Lugt (2002), we consider this emerging field to be in great need of exploration, particularly through the evaluation of repercussions in academic and professional design development. Through this study, our goal is to analyse the team work of designers in a synchronous space. The new technological developments of the synchronous work systems (web conference systems and the interactive whiteboard), allow us to enquire into the possibility of team sketching from a distance, especially on which strategies and interactions manifest themselves during the exchange of ideas through electronic and synchronous sketching. 2 Case Study The main motivation behind this study is to explore creative strategies in the areas of computer science and remote team collaboration. For this reason, we present the following case study which focuses on the analysis of creative behaviour in teams at the initial stage of the design process. In a laboratory, experimental studies on creativity emphasize the quantitative measurement of the production of an individual's ideas (Smith al. 2003). In our case, due to the explorative nature of the study and the conditions of the team activities, we couldn't determine beforehand the experimental variables; we only had access to the manipulation of the experimental task in our study proposal. Creative experiments generally focus on the analysis of creative output, in other words, the quantity or quality of the ideas produced. In our case, we wanted to analyze the creative group behaviour in collaborative activities. So we were only able to control the experimental task by introducing a problem within the professional scenario, that is to say, a problem which presents itself between a client and a designer (Cross, 2007). This simulation leads the participants to work collaboratively. 244 L.M. Jimenez-Narvaez and A. Segrera 2.1 Method The study involved seven subjects that were geographically dispersed 2 . The seven participants consisted of the following: A director of a research laboratory of cognitive ergonomics that appeared as a client and 6 designers (4 female and 2 male) with more than 5 years of professional experience each. The designers were divided in three teams of two. T1, a pair consisting of an industrial designer and a graphic designer (two females), T2 two industrial designers (males). The members of T1 and T2 have more than 15 years of individual professional experience and personally know each other but had not worked together before. T3 consisted of 2 industrial designers (females) that offer their services as a team to small scale companies for the past 4 years. Task The task at hand was to design the graphic image of a research laboratory. The task was proposed and carried out having in mind that the participants assume different roles in the function of the team. On the client side, the participant was required to express his request within 15 minutes in a precise manner and to supply sufficient information on the research laboratory in order to create a credible experimental/work scenario for the others participants. From their part, the designers had to have sufficient design abilities in order to come up with several different design proposals within a time span of 30 minutes. System and procedure After a thorough evaluation of groupware programmes for synchronous work in conjunction with the investigation team (Blond, 2009; Jimenez, 2010), the web video conference system and the interactive whiteboard of Vyew (www.vyew.com) were chosen along with Skype (www.skype.com) for audio communication amongst the participants. Vyew has the advantage of offering a complete palette of design tools and the ability to open several worksheets that allow for simultaneous sketching amongst the participants. In figure 1 we present Vyew along with its several functions. Each participant was located in a 2 This experiment was performed by Blond (2009) and Jimenez (2010) under the direction of profesor Jean-Marc Robert of Polytechnic School of Montreal and the Maison de technologies de information of Montréal (MATI-Montreal) at the Laboratory of usability. www.matimtl.ca workplace, working on a notebook equipped with a web camera and a graphic tablet. The interactions amongst each and every one participant through the system, were recorded using the software Morae®. This programme does not allow the creation of independent or free quotations during the observation of the activities of the participants. For this reason, the recordings were transferred into AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format audio video so that they can be subsequently analysed with the content analysis software Atlas TI® version 5.2. This software allowed us to analyse the graphic content of each worksheet that was produced by the teams as well as the verbal content of their interactions. Work space Vyew – Interactive whiteboard Oral Annotations Client Participant A Participant B Participant C Audioconference - Skype Fig. 1. Graphical depiction of the utilized systems (Vyew and Skype) 3 Analysis of Collaborative Sketching Production Concerning the analysis of the collaborative sketching production, Carroll cites the Kit of factor-referenced cognitive test of Ekstrom and Harman (1976) which includes a measuring instrument for the figurative fluidity, such as one's ability to “the ability to draw quickly a number of examples, elaborations, or restructurings based on a given visual or descriptive stimulus” (in Carroll, 1993, p. 432). Each design sketch represents a unit which is measured without reference to its quality or legibility; what matters is the produced quantity. In the collaborative design teamwork analysis of Visser (2009) on the graphic ideas production, it is suggested that each idea represented graphically should be analysed as a unit. Smith al. (2003) examine whether this process of accounting of the verbal Creative Collaborative Strategies of Remote Sketching on Design 245 expression, whether graphical or gestural, by units, is presented in all the tests of experimental analysis of the ideas production. In our study we use this approach in order to identify the graphic units created within the dynamic of the teams. 3.1 Analysis of the Production of Work Ideas The client has a meeting with each team, presenting to them his demands in verbal form in order to define the design in question, for 10 minutes. Afterwards, the teams verbally interact with the client for 11 (T1), 15 (T2) and 6 (T3) minutes. During this period, the teams formulate questions for the client in order to establish common points of reference and make the request as specific as possible. The first part of the work of the team is realised in a verbal form, the sketches accompany the verbal discussion that was centred around the selection of the “work categories” (Vargas-Hernandez al., 2001), also referred as “the work ideas” by Lawson (in Cross, 2007). These initial ideas are key-words directly originating from the client's request. The teams concentrate in making sketches that describe these words and explore the images within their figurative context as demonstrated in figure 2. Fig. 2. Details of the worksheets of “work ideas” of T3 concerning client’s request Once the teams have selected the work ideas and the keywords to take into account, we observe that there exist two types of work inside the group: a) a nominal work, in which each participant draws their layout sketch on the same page in a parallel way and b) a simultaneous work, in which one participant draws while the other watches, talks or adds details. This kind of work organisation directly relates to the time the members of each team have spent working together and is a behaviour that has been observed by Isaksen (1994) and has been defined as the time of maturing of the group. We assume that in the context of this experiment, these characteristics were found in the participating teams, in which the form of organization of work depends on the time of maturity in working together. The T1 and T2 teams, who were not accustomed to work together demonstrated a nominal work, while the T3 team remained a working simultaneously. Two of the T1 and T3 participants expressed a preference for working alone on a sheet of paper. However, one designer of T1 expressed the preference to working alone, so that after this designer has understood the customer demand and had sufficient sketches; this participant began the process of sharing ideas. In table 1 we can see that the way of individual ideas production obtains two different dynamics in accordance to this work organisation. Figure 3 summarizes the work performed by the teams in the ideas production as well as the interactions amongst the iterations of ideas between team’s members. This type of organisation of the ideas production, observed at table 1, has a direct impact on the transformation of the ideas of the group. The ideas generated by the group are the result of the sharing, integration and elimination of the individually produced ideas. In order to recognize them, we used the identification criteria proposed by Badke-Schaub and Frankenberger (2002); that consist of the analysis of the critical moment in which the designers intervene with the purpose of guide the ideas and align them to the restrictions imposed by the client's request, when they generate concepts that resolve the problem at hand or when they take decisions concerning the proposed ideas of their co-workers. Table 1. Ways of work organisation to share “work ideas” Team organization Type of team idea integration Nominal/ Parallel Selective Team assorts one idea of one member Additive Team takes one idea of each member Interactive/ Synergy Integrative Team joints all ideas of all members Inclusive The team takes one main idea of one member and adds details. Idea 1 Detail 2 Detail 3 246 L.M. Jimenez-Narvaez and A. Segrera During the collective idea production: co-production, in the nominal/parallel work, we note that the teams T1 has a selective comportment and T2 has a additive comportment, these teams seem to show more individual iterations on the same “work idea” and that the team units correspond to the selection of the sketches of the others. On the other hand, during interactive/simultaneous/synergic work, the team T3 shows an integrative and inclusive comportment, in this team T3, theirs group idea integrates the interpretations of the work ideas of the participants: it shows more ideas integrations and more of the group ideas iterations like are showing for the team T3 in figure 3. In Figure 3, we find a summary of the analysis of production of the graphic units drawn, in order to express the teams' ideas. As we have already mentioned, a unit is an idea expressed by the use of a word, a drawing or a gesture (Carroll, 1993). In the teams' general work we observed that verbal communication occupied an important place in the expression of ideas, this behaviour has also been observed by Johnson (2005) especially in the process of ideation. Once the corresponding verbalizations toward the work ideas have been expressed, for example, "we can use the USB symbol" (participant in T2), the participant proceeds to draw the "work idea”. In this way, we are able to present the sum of individual ideas within each group, see the first row of Figure 3. Fig. 3. Collaborative team ideas production in relation to the “work ideas” and individual interactions Next, we can see in the second row, the average number of iterations each team directed at their own individual work ideas. We can see that the creative behaviour in regards to the presentation of ideas of T1 is purely individual. Each participant works independently, without modifying nor intervening in the generating of their teammates ideas. Then in the third row, we see the integration of the individuals' proposed ideas, T2 and T3 are able to integrate their individual ideas and generate some group units observable in the fourth row. Finally, in the fifth row we see that only T3 succeeded at iterating in the ideas developed by the group. Although, remote collaborative sketching was a new experience for all three groups, the participants expressed their satisfaction with the interaction, in the stage of ideation and in the use of synchronous tools (Blond, 2009). The teams relied mainly on verbal brainstorming and remote sketching as a tool for producing ideas in groups. While the result of the quality variable (quality of the outputs: originality or rarity of the ideas) in regards to ideas was not studied, it was observed that in the strategies of creative collaboration two kinds of productivity could be seen: individual and group. Group productivity depends largely on the individual comportment or the individual ability to effectively integrate the ideas developed by all team members, which in turn depends on the environment and conditions of social interaction (Taggar, 2002; VanGundy, 1984), including those working in remote collaboration. 4 Discussion and Future Investigation In synchronous remote work, the presentation of the client’s request and the work of selection of work ideas develop through verbal communication. On the stage of co-production the participants can organise themselves in order to exchange their ideas in a nominal/parallel way or in an organisation of ideas presented in an interactive/simultaneous/synergic way. This form of organisation seems to be in relation with the time of work maturity of the team (Isaksen, 1994). Only, T3 was showing this comportement –they are the team with more time of previous work together. Each way or organization will generate different patterns of communication and integration of the individual “ideas of work”. The teams make the selection of the ideas, once these are drafted, in a verbal way. This process involves work cycles in which the nominal work requires verbal communication for the group idea selection; as for the simultaneous work, the audio conference needs to withstand the whole process of group idea formation. Without the synchronous verbal communication, the Creative Collaborative Strategies of Remote Sketching on Design 247 exchange or the selection of ideas, which will lead to the formation of group ideas, would not be possible. In the beginning of this investigation, we were hoping that within a digital synchronous workspace, a sketching strategy would be the re-utilisation of the sketch traces created by the co-workers. However, the re-utilisation of the sketches or the copy/paste action was not observed in any of the teams. The designers prefer to re-utilise the work ideas that are expressed in a verbal manner and then initiate a new cycle of individual graphic interpretation of a “work idea” expressed verbally, than the copy of the drawings (which expressed initially those ideas of work) of their co-workers. In future investigations, we would like to verify whether this characteristic manifests itself due to the lack of specific computer aptitudes from the participants, concerning these collaborative technologies or the use of electronic devices. The choice of the Vyew system was made taking into account the several different sketching tools that are available in this software and the ease of use that the interactive worksheets of the whiteboard offer. However, the participants had difficulties using them for several reasons: Difficulties with digital sketching using a pencil and a graphic tablet, their preference for individual alone sketching on paper, as well as the discontentment the designers showed with the lag that there exists between the making of a sketch and the actual appearance of the image within the system Also, two participants expressed a non agreement to have to sketching in a shared space; they would prefer the unaccompanied work in the sheet of paper –like an individual space (Blond, 2009). The above mentioned difficulties justify our interest in continuing our investigation on the digital and synchronous sketching, as well as on the work forms that can optimize the dynamic of collective sketching and of course the development of new aptitudes that will allow participants to interact remotely, using these new technologies of synchronous work. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) for the scholarship awarded to teacher Jimenez-Narvaez for her work in the project “Virtual spaces for the innovation”. Also, they extend their gratitude to Nikolaos Gryspolakis for the translation of the Spanish text into English and Debora McKinley for the last revision of the text. The authors would appreciate receiving your comments at the e-mail: arturo.segrera@umontreal.ca References Arnheim R, (1993) Sketching and the psychology of design. Design Issues 9(2):15–19 Blond A, (2009) Étude de l’utilisation de logiciels de communication, de partage et de conception pour la réalisation de travail collaboratif à distance. M.Sc.A. dissertation, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, Canada Bronikowski R, (1986) Managing the engineering design function. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Carroll JB, (1993) Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor-analytic studies. 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T1, a pair consisting of an industrial designer and a graphic designer (two females), T2 two industrial designers (males).