Communication is an essential part of any design process, and problems
in design communication can lead to delays, mistakes and even the
ultimate failure of projects. Design communication is a multifaceted
and complex phenomenon to study. It is about products and services
that may or may not yet exist and includes abstraction to possible
future situations. Communication can be formal or informal. It can,
for example, happen at the same time (synchronously) or at different
times (asynchronously) and it has different directions, such as from
manager to designer (top-down), from designer to manager (bottom-up),
between designers, and between designers and the users. Transmitted
information can take many different forms. It can be spoken, written
or drawn and can be sent and received using different media. Further,
a designer might work alone. More likely, however, the design process
is executed in large teams with members from differing backgrounds.
This special issue encourages investigation of a number of focus areas, including:
- Design communication during different design stages of the product
- Design communication in different situations, e.g. critical situations
- Interface communication (between a product and a designer, between
designers, between design teams, between companies, between
designers and society as a whole)
- Organisation of a design team to enable adequate communication,
e.g. the impact of team diversity, remote or co-located teams on the
design process
- Emergence of shared understanding through design communication
- Communication patterns in design meetings
- The impact of affective design communication on the design process
- The nature of informal and formal communication in the design process
- Visualization of design rationale as design communication
- Interpretation of intent from sketches and other forms of representation
- Using artefacts, such as drawings and prototypes as media in the design process
- The role and importance of the shape of products, e.g. product language
- Understanding and supporting information requirements of a design engineer
- Multimodal design communication
- The future of design communication in practice and research into
design communication
In investigating the topics listed above, we often draw on insights
and use methods from a number of scholarly disciplines to frame the
phenomenon observed, to analyze our findings and draw our
conclusions. Conscious or not, explicit or not, we as design
researchers view the subject matter from a certain disciplinary
angle. Perhaps we even use several. Ideally, the authors of this
special issue will draw out the angle chosen and make its
applicability and usefulness to design practice and research
explicit.
We welcome papers that are empirical, conceptual, theoretical, or
speculative.
- Papers that are empirical perhaps report on practice of
communication in design, using field studies or experiments.
- Papers that are conceptual in nature might reflect on existing discussions in
the literature.
- Papers that are theory-driven for instance explore
one perspective or create an in-depth comparison between different
theories of communication and their application to designing
products.
- Papers that are more speculative might describe the nature
and future of design communication.
Together, the papers are intended to show an overview of the field(s)
of research that contributes to the study of communication in design.
All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by at least three
reviewers. The selection for publication will be made on the basis of
these reviews. High quality papers not selected for this special
issue may be considered for standard publication in AIEDAM.
Information about the format and style required for
AIEDAM papers can be found at
www.cs.wpi.edu/~aiedam/Instructions/.
Papers should be less than 40 double-spaced pages, including figures and tables.
Note that all enquiries and submissions for special issues
go to the Guest Editors, and not to the Editor in Chief.
Important dates
(Revised):
Expression of interest (abstract & title): Before 31 January 2011
Submission deadline for full papers: 15 September 2011 NEW DEADLINE
Reviews due: 15 December 2011
Notification and reviews to authors: 1 February 2012
Revised version submission deadline: 15 May 2012
Submission of camera-ready version: 15 October 2012
Issue to publisher: 8 December 2012
Guest editors:
Dr. Maaike Kleinsmann
Department of Product Innovation Management
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
Delft University of Technology
Landbergstraat 15, 2628CE Delft
The Netherlands
Email: M.S.Kleinsmann @ tudelft.nl
Dr. Anja Maier
Department of Management Engineering
Technical University of Denmark
Produktionstorvet, Building 425
DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby
Denmark
Email: amai @ man.dtu.dk
