The impact of formal communication on the engineering design process

Reports the results of a study examining the impact of formal communication on the engineering design process. The data include self-reports of student engineers working on a specific design project and audio recordings of one teams´ meetings. The analysis focuses on how team members´ writing and other activities varied with the time frame of formal communications requirements imposed by supervisors and clients. This preliminary analysis of self-reports indicates that time spent on writing peaked with due dates for formal oral and written reports. Analysis of students´ talk in team meetings suggests that, although engineering students do focus on their design task, they do not discuss the written text and the design concepts as interdependent. Instead they work carefully to keep talk about text separate from talk about the design