The dynamics of collaborative design: Insights from complex systems and negotiation research

Almost all complex artifacts nowadays, including physical artifacts such as airplanes, as well as informational artifacts such as software, organizations, business processes and so on, are defined via the interaction of many, sometimes thousands of participants, working on different elements of the design. This collaborative design process is challenging because strong interdependencies between design decisions make it difficult to converge on a single design that satisfies these dependencies and is acceptable to all participants. Current collaborative design approaches are as a result typically characterized by heavy reliance on expensive and time-consuming processes, poor incorporation of some important design concerns (typically later lifecycle issues such as environmental impact), as well as reduced creativity due to the tendency to incrementally modify known successful designs rather than explore radically different and potentially superior ones.