Requirements for Virtual Design Review

The students and faculty affiliated with the Design Studios at MIT have conducted several experiments in geographically distributed design activities as part of the Design Studio of the Future research and education initiatives. Some of these experiments have involved collaboration among the studios within the institute while others have involved faculty and students in academic institutions from as far East as Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. The goal of this paper is to describe our experiences to date with synchronous distributed collaborative design over the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other commercially available communication systems. In particular, we will outline technical and social requirements for successfully conducting remote design reviews. Such reviews require a shift in design content from physical to electronic media which brings with it associated changes in roles, responsibilities, tools, and feature set. These changes are identified in this paper. Finally, we provide helpful suggestions for others who want to try the virtual review format in their organisations.