A Study Born from Crisis
COVID-19 · IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2021
When COVID-19 disrupted design practice worldwide, teams suddenly had to collaborate remotely without preparation. As a researcher already working in this field, I recognised a rare, fleeting moment worth capturing, and quickly initiated two rapid research studies to understand the emerging challenges designers faced.
I began with qualitative incident interviews with both students and professional designers, capturing real experiences of remote collaboration. Building on those insights, I designed and distributed an online survey to investigate how co-exploration happens — and what prevents it from happening.
The studies revealed that remote collaboration introduced uncertainty, reduced shared understanding, and made co-exploration difficult. Designers compensated with more individual exploration and more frequent meetings — but these efforts did not successfully replace collaborative exploration. And although many digital tools exist, designers rarely used most of them, because they lacked clarity about when and why a specific tool should be used.
The findings were published as Adjusting to a Distributed Collaborative Design Process During the COVID-19 Pandemic in IEEE Pervasive Computing (2021). They set the direction for the rest of my PhD and inspired bachelor students in my Constructive Design Research course to investigate new ways of supporting remote design collaboration.