Towards a set of principles and guidelines for distributed-design information storing

This paper discusses the development of a set of guiding Principles with a Framework to support distributed design information storing (d-DIS), informed by the findings of several studies into the information and knowledge stored by distributed teams of engineering design students whilst undertaking synchronous and asynchronous distributed design project work. Quantitative analysis of archived data and the use of qualitative research methods, such as questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and reflective focus groups, examine the key research question - 'How do students store design information and knowledge in a distributed design context?' i.e. what type of information is stored, where, when, how and why. The paper also presents student and staff feedback on these initial guiding Principles through workshop-style focus groups and concludes with an overview of the refined Principles based on feedback and further development.