Towards Principles and Project Memories for Distributed-Design Information Storing in Engineering Design Education

The issues of distributed working are many, with problems relating to information
access and information acquisition the most common (Crabtree et al., 1997). Little prescription or guidance on information management exists for designers (Culley et al., 1999). This thesis examines how engineering design students store information in distributed team-based project work. From these findings a set of guiding Principles for distributed-design information storing (d-DIS) are developed to support students undertaking distributed project work and to better prepare them for their role as graduate engineers in an ever increasingly international and globalised market. The thesis also presents the development of the concept of Project Memories, shared information spaces. It is crucial to provide an archive or repository that functions as a collective memory in order to support distributed design collaboration.