Cognitive artefacts and collaborative design

Cognitive artefacts (CAs) are acknowledged as important for individual cognition (D.A. Norman, 1991), but their function in group work has been largely neglected. Because information is represented symbolically in the CA, there are several possible problem representations. How a representation encodes this information may influence its cognitive processing-this is as important at the group level analysis as it is at the individual. Facilitating design involves both supporting the creativity of designers and stakeholder decision making. Some computerised artefacts enable single users to achieve these (e.g. CAD for creativity and expert systems for decisions) whilst others support group work (e.g. Email and GDSS technologies), but there are few artefacts that deliberately aid design activities both interpersonally and interactively. The representation available in the CA can be an effective means of passing this information between stakeholders. Designers are faced with distributed, ill structured problems; we therefore need to look at the role of technology in supporting them