DIGITAL INTERMEDIARY OBJECTS: THE (CURRENTLY) UNIQUE ADVANTAGE OF COMPUTER-SUPPORTED DESIGN TOOLS

The TATIN and TATIN-PIC projects lies at the crossroads of preliminary design and Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD) tools. Those projects studied the impact of multi-touch, multi-users tabletop groupware for co-located teamwork. The projects aim was to observe an improvement of the effectiveness of the preliminary design process when mediated by a CSCWD tool. Along 4 years several design observations have been conducted on specific design methods; each result have been presented independently during past Design Society conferences. This paper regroups and synthesizes all those results to draw a holistic conclusion. Digital intermediary objects represent the (currently) unique advantage of such CSCWD tools, as well as their greatest potential. Digital boosts their traditional role of inter-mediator improving teamwork s perceived productivity and confidence in the results, and open a wide range of possibilities like the interaction with AI systems.