Edinburgh Napier University

  Collaborative design is particularly important, in this globalize world, in aiding organizations in satisfying customer requirements through high innovation, reduced cost, high quality and lesser time to develop products. Communication is a major factor in collaboration, and its quality is heavily influenced by the quality of interaction. Various kinds of interaction are found in a design process. However, little work is available in assessing their quality. We emphasise the importance of interaction with the help of a collaborative model developed for understanding knowledge generation activities. The intent of this paper is to study the patterns of interaction among designers in communication with each other during product development process which will aid to assess their quality. We generate types of questions and answers by analysing two different kinds of interaction captured from industry. In the results of analysing these interactions we have developed a generic interaction model of questions and answers. We argue that this model should be helpful to understand the patterns of interaction in any stage of the design process. We argue that by enhancing the quality of these interactions customer requirements mentioned above can be satisfied more efficiently.