Joint Remembering in Co-Design: An Ethnographic Study of Functions and Multimodal Processes

The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence that illustrates how the interweaving of verbal, bodily, social and material resources supports joint remembering of relevant aspects of co-design projects during group interactions. Our data comes from an ethnographic study we conducted in a video design studio in Barcelona. The analysis focuses on the role of questions triggering the formation of multimodal remembering sequences (MRSs). This study suggests that questions acting as reminders foster the formation of MRSs. MRSs are supported by an on-the-fly integration and coordination of multiple contextually relevant resources. Our preliminary findings are relevant for the development of new design-rationale systems in HCI that consider such complex dynamics.