Development of a systematic classification and taxonomy of collaborative design activities

An interdisciplinary review of literature relevant to collaborative design is used as a basis to propose a taxonomy for the classification of collaborative design situations. The taxonomy includes top-level attributes of team composition, communication, distribution, design approach, information, and nature of the problem. Three taxonomic-oriented measures are introduced and used to evaluate the taxonomy: orthogonality, completeness, and usability. This taxonomy is an initial step towards the creation of new agent-based collaborative support tools structured upon a fundamental understanding of the collaborative process with a theoretical foundation. More significantly, the taxonomy provides a valuable way of organising the research literature in collaborative design that is at present dispersed across many domains and disciplines.