A multi-functional collaborative design environment

• Main Author: Wu, Kuo-Cheng
• Published: University of Salford 2012
• Subjects: 620.00420285
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.555162

Typical construction projects involving a large number of stakeholders working together require a tremendous amount of collaboration amongst them. In order to reduce the cost and length of the project life cycle undertaken by the design team and to avoid any catastrophic problems at later stages in the life cycle, technologies such as BIM and CAD tools have been adopted to support more efficient design assessment. This research is to explore a human-centric collaborative environment for the construction sector that can allow multi-functional team members to come together to visualise, explore, assess and design optimised building solutions. It resulted in creating a collaboration platform that integrates multi-functional interfaces allowing teams to explore the design from their own perspectives. Within this multi-user environment the concept of private and public spaces were explored in order to enhance design exploration, both individually and as a team. The environment was tested for the utility, likability and usefulness of the collaborative design system taking the design of a bathroom for a disabled client as a case study. The final results suggest that in overall it could potentially enhance the multi-functional collaborative design.