The Conversational Organisation of Drawing

This paper presents a detailed empirical study of drawing activities in a face-to-face design discussion between three architects. We show that, in addition to their usefulness for representing spatial relationships, drawing activities also display important interactional functions. A short 12 minute interaction is described in which a rich variety of shared drawing spaces are created. We make three claims: i) unlike gesture or speech, drawing activities do not automatically claim rights to the floor´, ii) drawing sub-spaces are used to help people monitor if they are talking about the same thing iii) people collaborate to create 3D ´virtual´ maquettes through temporary combinations of sketch spaces and gestures. We argue that drawing is defined more by its interactional than its inscriptional character.