Effects of Augmented Information System on Design Communication: A Human-Subject Study Using Aircraft Design Studio

This paper performs a human subject study to investigate the effect of an augmented design interface on the communication behavior and performance of multidisciplinary design teams. We frame an aircraft design task as an iterative multidisciplinary design process with 12 design parameters shared across four design actors, each in charge of one discipline, implemented in a browser-based virtual design studio. We conduct a baseline experiment to collect observational data on design communication and performance and recommend two augmentations to improve team performance: a flexible design timer to control design iterations and a history catalog that quantifies the quality of previous design states. Results of an augmented experiment show the new features increase design iteration rate and decrease chat message rate, enabling the most successful teams to complete the task faster. We discuss the implications of our results in the broader context of digitalization and transformations due to information systems.