Phenomenological Understanding of the Collaborative Technologies at AEC Global Teamwork Program

CS378 Phenomenological Foundations of Language, Cognition, and Computation

Final Term Paper

Phenomenological Understanding of the Collaborative Technologies used in the AEC Global Teamwork Program

By Yunn Chyi Chao [email protected]

6/6/2002

Professor Terry Winograd Stanford University CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002

Abstract This paper aims to understand from a phenomenological perspective the roles played by collaborative technologies in AEC global teamwork. This preliminary investigation will form part of my research study on how collaborative tools support learning in this context.

In order to understand what people experience in interacting with the technologies and the environment, why people practice in the way they do, and how the practice fits into the environment, I conducted an ethnographic study by following two AEC teams during their course of study from January to May 2002 to observe how they participate and learn in this social setting. This paper is based on the data that I have gathered from this preliminary study.

To set the background of the study, this paper begins with a brief introduction to the AEC global teamwork learning environment, its structure, technologies and the people. In reporting the results of the study, the analysis is structured under:  Understand the setting – the relationships between the people, technologies and activities in this setting,  How people make choices – how AEC teams adopt and abandon the collaborative technologies,  How people’s interaction is mediated by the tools – the roles of the technologies in the team’s interaction, and  How the technology in practice affects the team’s work patterns – the emergent work practice.

The paper concludes with implications on how to improve the design of the AEC learning environment that supports the learners to achieve their goal of producing a better and efficient product.

1. Introduction

In general, social scientists who concern themselves with learning treat technology as a given and are not analytic about its interrelations with other aspects of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). However, in order to become a full participant in this AEC community, where technology is omnipresent and inseparable from all the learning activities, learning to work with (and work through) technology is a key component of learning in this context. For the students, this includes engaging with the technologies in doing their project work, as well as participating in the social relations and team-building, problem-solving, decision making, and other activities involve in these mix of communities of practice.

But the understanding to be gained from engagement with technology can be extremely varied depending on the form of participation enabled by its use and the people that are using it.

2 CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002

Understanding the technology of a practice is more than learning to use tools; it is a way to connect with the history of the practice and “experience this coming to presence as the destining of a revealing.” (Heidegger, 1977)

To establish the context of this investigation, I shall first of all give a brief introduction to the setting where the actions were taking place. Thereafter report on the results and analysis of the investigation.

2. The Architecture / Engineering / Construction (AEC) Global Teamwork Learning Environment – The goals and the structure, the people, the learning activities, and the technologies

2.1 The goals and the structure (Fruchter, 2002) The program is a cross-disciplinary, geographically distributed and project-based course offered over two academic quarters. It engages students, faculty, and industry practitioners from three disciplines (Architecture/Engineering/Construction) in a distributed learning environment including universities from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and US. The goal is to provide a forum that prepares a new generation of professionals to team up with practitioners from other disciplines and take advantage of information technology to produce better, faster, cheaper constructed facilities (e.g. buildings).

Students are grouped into teams. Each team consists of members of the three disciplines (A, E, and C) from the MS program, and/or one apprentice student from the BS program.

Modes of interaction and content sharing in this context are spread out both in time (synchronous and asynchronous) and in space (geographically distributed and collocated). The members meet only once face-to-face during a kickoff event at the beginning of January.

The core of this learning environment is a building project based on a real-world setting with a program, a budget, a site, a time for delivery, and a demanding owner. The teams have tight deadlines, engage in design reviews, and negotiate modifications.

The learning and teamwork activities are both structured and unstructured. The structured activities include lectures, professional practice sessions and project presentations. The unstructured activities refer to students working in teams building their projects.

In this context, AEC students are challenged to cross three chasms – disciplines, space, and culture, during their learning experience.

The subjects of this study have been the ninth generation of this AEC program.

2.2 The People The people who are involved in this program are: The AEC students, the apprentice, the owners, the AEC professionals (mentors), instructors, and the teaching assistants (the research team). The participants are geographically distributed and come from a discipline of either A, E or C.

2.3 The learning activities In this context, learning is situated and developed through activities. The objective of the course is not to develop the specific technical skills of A, E or C, but rather is to offer the individual professional the opportunity to assess his or her competencies and motivation for that kind of work and how to work with other disciplines and collaboratively design the building for their project. In other words, learning is to be achieved collectively through activities and practices.

I have categorized the activities under: Collaborative readiness (kick-off events), Team Building, Problem-based learning, and Communities of Practice.

Under the AEC community, the individual communities at this setting are: The teams of AEC students, the professionals from AEC disciplines, the communities of each discipline of A, E and C. This paper concentrates on the communities formed by each AEC teams.

2.4 The collaborative technologies The collaborative technologies that are made available to learners in this context are:  The software, which includes both commercial systems that are explicitly designed for person-to-person communication and in-house developed system that are designed for specific collaboration functionality: o Synchronous systems – video conferencing (VC); instant messenging (IM); and telephone. o Asynchronous systems – emails; RECALL (Fruchter and Yen, 2000) for knowledge capture, sharing and re-use1; and threaded Discussion Forum to support the asynchronous interactions among distributed team members2; shared WWW workspace for each team to archive and share their project documents.  The supporting hardware (laptop) and network (Intranet and wireless LAN).

This paper focuses only on the synchronous systems.

1 RECALL is a drawing application that captures, indexes, and synchronizes the sketch activity with audio/video. 2 A private discussion forum is setup for each team to facilitate the capture, sharing, tracking and re-use of ideas, issues, topics and project solutions (Fruchter, 2002).

3. The Study

3.1 The Subjects The unit of analysis of this preliminary study is teams (a community of practice of AEC students). The two teams, which I shall henceforth refer to as Medial Team and Isle Team, were observed from January – May 2002. Medial Team had three members, where A (Architect) was located in Germany, E (Engineer) and C (Constructional manager) were stationed at Stanford, USA. The building that the team was designing was located at SF, USA. Isle Team had 4 members, A in Kansas, USA, E in Sweden, C and apprentice at Stanford, USA. Their building project was located at Florida, USA. They have met each other face-to-face for only a couple of days during the kickoff in January. Thereafter they returned to their own locations. (Please refer to Appendix for the detailed description of the culture and educational background of the subjects and their experience with computers).

3.2 The Independent and Dependent variables The independent variables in this setting are the structured tasks. Participants were given the (1) same type of projects with the same constraints (deadlines and ‘real’ requirements); (2) same set of technologies; (3) same type of team setup – a geographically distributed team of A, E and C and an owner (a slight variation of with or without an apprentice); and (4) same set of structured activities such as lectures, professional practice sessions and project presentations.

The dependent variables are: (1) the relation between the people, technologies, and learning activities; (2) the situated learning activities identified in section 2.3, namely, team building; problem-solving; and community of practice; and (3) the participants of the two teams.

3.3 Method of Evaluation The data for this study were obtained through observations, interviews, and survey. In this paper, I will not go into the details of how the data were collected 3, instead I will concentrate on a phenomenological interpretation of the emerging themes gathered from the data on how people, technologies and the setting interact in this learning environment.

As the first step of investigation and to keep the scope of discussion in this paper manageable, I will focus only on the synchronous software systems.

4. The Results and Analysis – An exploration of the Emerging Themes in the AEC Setting from a phenomenological perspective

Phenomenology seeks to understand the lived experience of individuals and their intentions within their “lifeworld”. It answers the question, “What is it like to have a certain experience.” (Crabtree et al, p.24). In attempting to explore the relations between

3 The details on how the study was carried out, how the teams were selected, data were triangulated and analyzed, etc. will be reported in a separate paper.

5 CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002 people, technology and the setting at this context, I shall look into what people experience in participating in this setting, why the practice is done and how the practice fits into the fabric of their daily lives.

The investigation begins with seeking a better understanding of the setting – the “lifeworld” in which the interaction between people, technologies and activities take place. Based on this understanding, the paper turns to the exploration of how the teams adopt and abandon the tools during the preparation stage of collaboration; how the roles of these systems evolve in the team’s interaction; and how the technology in practice affects the team’s work patterns.

4.1 The AEC Setting – A Dynamic Relationship between the People, Technologies and Activities

AEC setting Time Types of Interactions: People people (may/may not be mediated by technology tools) People (across space) People activities (may/may not be mediated by technology tools) People  technology tools Activities Technology

Figure 1: The AEC setting

Figure 1 shows the different types of interactions between the three elements – people, activities and technologies, in the AEC setting.

On one hand, the AEC setting connotes an identifiable framework of activities and tools that is predetermined (by the designers of the global teamwork academic program as well as the designers of the technology). This framework has properties that transcend the experience of the students, and that exist prior to them, and are entirely beyond their control. In other words, using the term from Heidegger, AEC participants are “thrown” into this setting and “flow with the situation” (Winograd and Flores, p35). But on the other hand, different individuals experience the setting differently, different encounters result in different practices and thus shape the setting.

Nevertheless, it is also the convergence of the setting and people that create the meaning of the activities. A building project is not just a problem waiting to be solved. It is the setting, the technologies, and the people together that shape the problem and allow the teams to come up with different innovative designs. This explains why, in the past nine years, every successive generation has produced drastically different designs for the same projects. In this setting, the people and the teams, the activities, as well as the technology tools, are all mutually dependent and change each other.

Thus the AEC setting is social. It forms a “lifeworld” in which the interactions between the technologies, the activities, and the people take place and the participants make meaning through their actions. As stressed by Heidegger, the most important aspect of the way in which we encounter the world is that we encounter it practically (Dourish, 2001).

Hence rather than consider the setting as an objective entity with fixed rules that are independent of the participants, the AEC setting is indeed a set of dynamic relationships between the people, technologies and activities where each of these elements shapes the relationship and changes its dynamic.

It is crucial for the designer of the AEC program to understand this aspect of the AEC setting since this is where the learning and practice are situated and take place.

4.2 The Interactions between People and Technology I shall now look into the interactions between people and technologies. Collaborative technologies were absolutely necessary in this setting because the participants were geographically distributed and it was also an essential constraint that was built into this setting (discussed under section 2.1). As C from Medial remarked in the later stage, “No technology, no product!”

While all teams were introduced with the same set of collaborative software tools at the beginning of the program, it was interesting to observe how different teams came up with different choices and adapted to it differently.

This section will focus on the interactions between people in a team and the synchronous software systems4 in this dynamic setting. During my study from January till May, I observed how in stages, the roles of technologies evolved and became idiosyncratic to a team. I called the three stages: Stage 1: Preparation for collaboration – The adoption and abandonment, Stage 2: Adaptation – The transition from visible to invisible, and Stage 3: Idiosyncratic Usage – The coupling of readiness-to-hand and present–to–hand5. However, a point to emphasize is that there was no clear distinction between these stages, it was a series of continual phenomena that progressed through the stages.

As Heidegger argues, one of the ways that Dasien encounters the world is to be able to use what it finds in order to accomplish its goals. It finds the tools that are most suitable to it – its life, its needs, its prejudices, and its prior experience (Winograd and Flores, 1987).

4 The synchronous software systems presented by the instructors were: Video Conferencing system (VC), Instant Messenging (IM), and telephone. (Please refer to section 2.3 for other details) 5 Heidegger uses hammer and hammering to illustrate the concept that objects and properties are not inherent in the world, but arise only in events that lead to present-at-hand. The essence of this example is in the way in which the hammer moves from being ready-to-hand to present-at-hand, i.e. from being employed within the action of hammering as an almost “invisible” extension of my arm to becoming more immediately present and “visible” as an object of focus and attention. When the hammer is present-at-hand, it is separated from its user, while in the ready-to-hand situation, the hammerer’s arm and the hammer feature as a single unit in the hammerer’s activity. (Winograd and Flores, 1987; Dourish, 2001)

Following this argument, I shall investigate how people’s lives, needs, prejudices, and prior experiences affect their interactions with the tools at different stages and help their teams to accomplish the shared goals.

It is important to note that the members of the two teams, Medial and Isle, were both high achievers. Both teams stood out among their cohorts and produced the best products this year.

4.2.1 Stage 1: Preparation for collaboration – The adoption and abandonment of (synchronous) collaborative software

Participants were “being thrown in a situation of acting” immediately during the kick-offs in January. Without the “opportunity to disengage and function as detached observers” (Winograd and Flores, pp. 35, 99), they were engaged in actions such as planning on how to work closely with 2 or 3 geographically distributed strangers from other disciplines and establishing a way for the team to communicate. At the same time, they had to learn and try out the many unfamiliar technologies that were introduced. As E from Medial commented retrospectively after his final presentation (in May), “I was totally overwhelmed at the beginning [of the program]!”

In short, during this preparation stage, the team was thrown onto the need to establish a platform for communication without much opportunity to reflect on their actions.

The Adoption and Abandonment Even though the same set of (synchronous) communication tools6 were introduced to all participants at the beginning of the program, it was observed that the decision of which tool to adopt or abandon later was not pre-planned. Rather, it was a series of evolving actions that emerged over a period of time and was idiosyncratic to each team.

Isle’s Decision – Instant Messenging was the one! VC was abandoned (almost completely) by Isle after some members failed to setup the camera and audio within the first couple of weeks. Throughout the whole program, they used VC only while they were meeting (formally) with the instructor. For meetings among the members, IM was adopted as the main (and only) synchronous communication tool.

In explaining why Isle abandoned VC and adopted IM, A said, “While we tried to set up VC, we would talk through IM half of the time, just trying to coordinate the logistics of getting a VC together and then sometimes, one of our cameras or microphones would be out.....so, we just went right to IM with no problem.”

However, it was observed that little effort was spent on troubleshooting the setup problem, in other words, they gave up VC pretty easily and adopted an alternative.

6 VC (Netmeeting), IM, and telephone were introduced as default synchronous communication software tools for the community during the preparation for team collaboration.

On the surface, one reason for Isle to abandon VC was attributed to the technical breakdowns. But using VC also means that the team had to spend time to make prior arrangement and prepare the materials for discussion beforehand.

“We’re really fast pace, a lot of quick meeting, so you don’t really have the time and drive to set something up [for VC],” said the apprentice.

For Isle, being efficient and not to “waste time” were their main concerns. The most important criteria for adopting or abandoning a tool was whether it enabled them to get things done most efficiently (and effectively). Hence VC was reserved only for the “big” meetings with the Instructor or the owner.

On the other hand, it is not surprising that Isle chose IM as their main communicative tool. Majority, except E, were already very familiar with this tool. A, E, and the apprentice indicated that they chatted online daily before they joined the program (Please refer to Appendix for the background of the subjects). To them, IM was a tool that was “ready-to-hand” in their lives. It was a natural choice. In addition, IM affords short and quick conversations – no prior arrangement was needed and hence no time would be “wasted”.

In summary, the choice of tools by Isle indicated that the team’s actions were very much affected by: their prior experience (familiar with IM), their needs (need a tool to communicate), their prejudice and values (efficient and not to “waste time”, “[It is] without the needs to have everybody there, people are there only when they are needed to be there,” “video and audio in VC are not important or useless” even though they have either no experience or only little experience in using VC), their busy schedule (“find a time that is common for everybody is almost impossible”) and their life-style (Going online has been part of the daily routine of A, C and the apprentice).

However, it is also important to note that a choice for a team is not necessarily the choice of every member. In this situation, E from Isle had no experience in using IM or VC, he simply followed the choice of his teammates. Even though later when he felt that “sometimes it’s hard to ask the right question and to understand the answer [over IM], but what to do ....”, IM remained the main communicative tool for Isle throughout. This illustrates also how one was “thrown” into action independent to his will, he needed to respond to whatever came up and “flow with the situation.”

Medial Team – Combining all! For Medial, they too, encountered problems with the camera and audio setup for the VC (Netmeeting). But instead of abandoning it, they worked around it and coupled it with another new product iVisit, which was introduced by A (A from Medial was highly technically savvy. Please refer to Appendix for A’s background). The team took the trouble to invent ways to use the tools in order for all the members to meet together and be able to see and hear each other in real-time. Besides the need to set up a platform to

9 CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002 work and communicate, the driving force behind this effort was to build a strong team spirit.

The team considered the way for their team to produce the best product was to establish a good understanding and sense of belonging among its members.

“Just for [building] the team spirit is worth the effort [to schedule meetings and prepare drawings before hand],” said C.

They indicated that being able to see each other and to meet as a team was essential in building team spirit and helping in communication.

“ The more cues you have about another ones facial expression, tone of voice etc. the better empathy works, the better the communication is.” Said A.

On the other hand, Medial used IM only as a cue to check if each other were online.

“ We don’t really chat over [IM]. Sometimes just drop a one liner like “hello, how are u there”. We won’t discuss our project over [IM].” Said E of Medial before the winter presentation (in March).

Even though how Medial team adopted the tools (no abandoning!) was very different from Isle, their decision too was influenced by their prior experience (A is familiar with VC and technically savvy), prejudices and values (“Team meeting means everyone in the team meet together, ” “There is a risk if only 2 meeting, the other may feel being excluded from the team.”) and their needs of working as a team, being able to see and hear each other and make decision together.

Discussions The fact that there were no two teams among the participants that were operating in the same manner and using the same set of tools for their communication shows that in this setting, people’s action was social and situated within the community of practice (team). The community of practice determined the shared systems of meaning and values, and norms and rules. It also shows how the practice was influenced by the people’s traditions.

This observation simply pointed to the simple (and old) “fact” that building good team dynamics (establish common values and norms) is the key to achieving the goal of producing a better and efficient product.

In order to support the learners to achieve this goal, the first step should be to support each team to establish a strong team dynamic and shared values and norms.

But this is not a simple task since it has to be the community of practice (the team) that determines its dynamic and common values. In addition, as discussed, in this setting, participants were thrown into actions without opportunity (and time) for them to reflect on their actions. Even if they did, they were practiced within their tradition, their implicit beliefs and assumptions. As Heidegger argues, there is no neutral viewpoint from which

10 CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002 we can see our beliefs as things, since we always operate within the framework they provide. (Winograd and Flores, p.32)

However, as Winograd and Flores (1987) have pointed out, this does not negate the importance of trying to gain better understanding of our own assumptions so that we can expand our horizon. We can become aware of some of our prejudices, and in that way emancipate ourselves from some of the limits they place on our thinking. (Winograd and Flores, pp. 30, 32)

Following their argument, it is important for the designer of the program to create (continuous) opportunities for the members to raise their awareness about their assumptions and beliefs, and allow them to reflect on their actions and see how these actions can affect their team as a whole. Most importantly, these opportunities (or activities) have to be situated and contextualized within their community of practice (team) and grounded on the understanding of the members’ background, their needs and concerns.

4.2.2 Stage 2 and 3: From Adaptation to Idiosyncratic usage – The roles of the technologies in the team’s interaction

The roles of technologies transcended from being visible (present-at-hand) to their users who were acting consciously in adopting and abandoning the tools, to becoming ready- to-hand. For both teams, the technologies had integrated into their “world” in such a way that they turned IM or VC into their meeting room, socializing place, working area, and a “window” to “see” each other. Besides the video (during video conferencing), the iconic representations (online or offline, away or available, etc) had become the major (if not the only) indicators of the availability and status of their teammates for both Medial and Isle.

A from Isle described the way he interacted with his teammates (via IM):

“Because we are often near our computer...I'm on it all the time...and usually my partners are on too...that way, we can just say “how is it going” everyday or answer specific questions...I feel like we always have a good idea about how the other is doing...[For example] I was working last night and talked to [the apprentice] for 30 minutes. Off and on with different questions, then talked to [E] for 15 minutes. This morning...I mailed everybody and told them my progress.”

In sum, as an integral part of their AEC “world”, both Medial and Isle had developed their unique shared ways of acting with and acting through these systems (idiosyncratic usage).

In other words, these systems had come to be appropriated by and were “invisible” to their users and put to work within the specific patterns of practice by these teams (Dourish, 2001, p.138).

Discussion – Visibility and Invisibility Transcending from being present-at-hand (visible) to readiness-to-hand (invisible), the “appropriateness” and the “invisibility” of these tools was an important phenomenon in this learning environment. Invisibility or readiness-to-hand of mediating technologies is necessary for allowing the participants to focus on, and thus support (the visibility of) the learning tasks at hand, i.e. the invisibility of the technology allows them to concentrate on their building project and coordinate with their partners. The sooner these tools become ready-to-hand, the sooner the learners are able to concentrate on their learning activities.

On the other hand, present-at-hand or visibility of the significance of the technology is necessary for allowing the team to use the tools effectively as a medium for communication. For example, members of Isle had to be consciously aware that going online (login to IM) and making themselves available to their partners through IM are crucial to their team dynamic. They had to prepare themselves that once they go online, they can get contacted (or distracted) by their partners at any moment, and quick and fast reactions to their questions are expected. Whereas for Medial, they needed to realize that setting up a VC meeting and ensuring that audio, video work properly during the meeting is essential for them to focus on the discussion.

Lave and Wenger (1991) used the analogy of windows to describe the interplay of visibility and invisibility. A window’s invisibility is what makes it a window, that is, an object through which the world outside becomes visible. The very fact, however, that so many things can be seen through it makes the window itself highly visible.

The collaborative systems were the windows that allowed the teams to physically “see and hear” their partners, and to virtually reach their partner’s thoughts and cooperate, or simply “reach out to the world”. However, this window is not uni-directional, it is a mediator of two worlds – the user’s world and the world of the remote teammate he is communicating. The invisibility of this mediator allows its users to focus on the (two) worlds, and the visibility of the significance of this mediator by the two worlds enables its unproblematic use.

The effective use of the tools is thus “a matter of providing a good balance between these two interacting requirements – synergy and conflicts between invisibility and visibility.” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) An effective use of tools will lead to progressing from stage 1 to stage 3, where the tools fade in and out from the background to the foreground and vice versa as and when they are needed during the practice.

A challenge will be how to help the team to progress from stages 1 to 3 and at the same time, shorten the time span of stages 1 and 2.

4.2.3 Conclusions This investigation on how people interact with technology draws our attention to the evolution of practice, and to the ways in which practices evolve around technologies, over time, and within a community. In particular, acquiring mastery of a practice involves

12 CS378 Yunn Chyi Chao, Spring 2002 the gradual movement of an individual into the community, and the ability to apply meaning and values in ways appropriate to the community.

4.3 The Emergent Work Practice – How the technology in practice affected the team’s work patterns

(a) Interaction of Medial Team (AEC as one (b) Interaction of Isle Team (dyads): mediated by IM, unit): mediated mainly by VC, IM and emails (meetings were carried out in dyads most of the emails times)

A C E C A

A E E Ap VC, emails, online chat A Ap E C Ap: Apprentice C Ap Lots of interactions Less interactions Figure 2: the patterns of interactions of Medial and Isle Teams

The emergent work patterns As shown in Figure 2a, Medial worked as one “solid” unit. As discussed in section 4.2.1, they considered the way for their team to produce the best product was to establish a good understanding and sense of belonging among its members. They made it an effort to arrange and prepare for their team meetings. All three members would gather, discuss and make decisions over VC. All information was sent to all three members and decisions were made by consensus7.

Whereas for Isle, it was a team of dyads, most of the meetings among the members were carried out in dyads (Figure 2b). Meetings were on a needs basis. Information circulated only to those who were deemed “needed”.

“We’re not very structured as a group. Half of the time I don’t even know what’s going on between [say], A and E. But we don’t have to spend time together, gather information that we don’t really need. So no time is wasted.” said the apprentice.

As discussed in section 4.2.1, being efficient and not to “waste time” were their main concerns. For Isle, no time is “wasted” on pre-planning the meetings. No one in Isle was responsible for scheduling meeting. Or rather, everyone in the team took the initiative to call for meeting with the “relevant” member and discuss a specific idea or problem.

7 There were a couple of times when A (at Germany) failed to show up in a meeting. E and C simply waited and chatted on other subjects. Instead of carrying out the meeting without A, they eventually canceled the meeting and re-scheduled another one.

Discussion The work patterns emerged in these two teams shows that on one hand, the practice is the process of continual response from the people as well as the tasks to the circumstances within which it was being produced. On the other hand, it was also the consequence of the technology they adopted in their practice. For example, Isle’s style of working in dyads and constantly engaged in quick and short questions were the response from its members, whose top concerns were “Efficient and no time wasting”, as well as the tasks arisen at these circumstances, i.e. the short and direct questions such as how long should the beam be? What is the cost of the materials, etc.

Nevertheless, this work pattern was also the response to the (functionality of the) tool adopted by the team. A quick comparison shows that the work pattern of Isle arose from the affordances of IM. As the name suggests – Instant Messenging – IM is a tool that encourages instant and quick exchange of information. The iconic display and the alerts about the status of the user’s contacts (online or offline, available or busy, etc) allowed the members to know the availability of each other and thus encourage impromptu contacts.

Under this notion, team practice was directly affected by the way each team adopted the technologies. The technologies adopted set the constraints and together with their affordances, defined the way the teams functioned and the behavior of the people. But on the other hand, it was also the team’s decision, their heritage and their pre-set goals that drove them to adopt the technologies (section 4.2.1). This observation showed the intricate and dynamic embodied relationship between the people, technologies, activities and the setting.

Hence in order to support the learner to produce a better product, it is important for the designer of the program not to overlook the affordances of the technology in practice and treat the technology as a given. These functionalities play a key part in affecting the work practice.

Another interesting point to make from these emergent work practices is the issues on efficiency and effectiveness. On the surface, it seems that the communication cycle for making a decision took longer for Medial compared to Isle. But due to the nature of AEC projects, most of the time, a decision between say, A and E, will inevitably affect C and a counter suggestion from C will affect A and E. Hence a complete cycle for reaching a consensus among the three disciplines may eventually take longer if the meetings were conducted in dyads. However, due to the scope of this paper, I will not dwell into this issue but leave the discussion to a later study.

5. The Subjectivity of My Interpretation

Before we apply what we have learned about the technology tools to inform the design of the AEC program, it is timely to step back and reflect on the ethnographic work and examine its underlying meaning.

Coming from a background embedded in the rationalistic tradition, I am trained to be analytical. It is clear from this paper that there is a constant tension between the rationalistic and the phenomenological ways of thinking about meaning. On one hand, I am trying to find the emerging patterns, which in a way implies that I believe that there is “a pattern” that governs the people’s behavior and “exists independently of the act of interpretation”. On the other hand, in trying to give meaning to what the subjects experienced and their actions, the interpretation itself is subjective. I myself am a subject who is situated within a tradition and bounded by social commitment. The education that I have gone through in acquiring knowledge and establishing thinking skills and the skills to interpret are a consequence of that tradition. The training together with the social values that are embedded in me, i.e. what I am, inevitably shapes what I see, how I think and how I give meaning to what I observed.

As pointed out by Maturana, Gadamer, and Heideggar our ability to think and give meaning to observation is rooted in our participation in a society and a tradition (Winograd and Flores, p61). By interacting with the subjects and immersing myself in the world around them allow me to understand and give meaning to what they do.

This subjective interpretation is indeed an attempt to uncover the underlying meaning of the AEC setting -- how the roles of these technologies tools play a part in this dynamic relation between the people, technologies and activities, and what are its constraints and abilities that facilitate collaboration. Understanding this intimate relation between people and the tools is essential to the researchers at PBL to create tools and learning environments that help AEC learners to collaborate and “produce a better, faster, cheaper constructed facilities.” (Fruchter, 2001)

6. Conclusions and Implications

This paper attempted to understand from a phenomenological perspective, the roles played by collaborative technologies8 in AEC global teamwork. The aim of this investigation is to inform the design of the AEC learning environment so as to support the needs of its learners to achieve the goal of producing a better product more efficiently.

Based on the study of the two AEC teams, the results indicated that:

8 In this paper, the collaborative tools are referring only to the synchronous software system such as VC and Instant Messenging.

 AEC setting is a set of dynamic relationships between the people, technologies and activities where each of these elements shapes the relationship and changes its dynamic.  The action of adopting and abandoning of the collaborative tools was situated within the community of practice, and was an attribute of the people’s life, their needs, their prejudices and their prior experience.  The collaborative tools played the role of a “window” in this learning environment. On one hand, the invisibility of the mediating technologies allowed the subjects to focus on the learning tasks, and on the other, the visibility of the significance of the tool allowed its unproblematic use.  Furthermore, the emergent work practice of teams was a process of continual response from the people as well as the tasks to the circumstances within which it was being produced. The technologies adopted set the constraints and, together with their affordances, define the way the team functions and the behavior of its members.

Some general considerations for the design of AEC program are: (1) Understand that AEC setting is a dynamic social setting, rather than an objective entity, where the learning and practice are situated and taken. (2) Create (continuous) opportunities for the participants to raise their awareness about their own assumptions and beliefs, and allow them to reflect on their actions and see how these actions can affect their team as a whole. This would help the team to emancipate some of the limits they place on their thinking and thus lead to a better team dynamic. (3) Assist learners to progress (as soon as possible) to the stage where a tool is used as a couple between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, such that it will fade in and out from the background to the foreground and vice versa as and when it is needed during the practice. This will allow the learners to concentrate on the tasks at hand and at the same time, use the tools effectively to achieve their goals. (4) The functionalities of the tools play a key part in affecting the work practice. Hence it is important for the designer of the program not to overlook the significance of the technology in practice and treat it as a given.

A limitation of this paper is that this is only a preliminary analysis. The fact that I am still in the final process of data collection means there is a possibility that some significant themes have yet to be discovered, or there could be some flaws in my interpretation due to the incomplete data. However, an attempt was made to raise the awareness to the designers and help to place the design in a context that facilitates the achievement of the learning goals.

Appendix. Background of the Subjects

(1) Their Experience in Asynchronous Collaborative Software In Medial Team, A was an experienced user of all the collaborative software. E had no experience on using VC. However, he chatted over instant messenging (IM) almost daily. C had no experience at all in using the synchronous software (VC and IM). When commenting about the IM, C said “It took much longer to type than to speak. When you want to write something that is too long, the other has already replied. So it’s not easy to keep to one subject in a logical way. So the discussion doesn’t make too much sense. It is a bit messy, I have to try to type quicker”.

Among the 4 members in Isle (AEC + apprentice), except for the E (from Sweden), all the other three members used IM daily. All, except the apprentice, had either no experience or very little experience using other communicative software (e.g. VC).

Another general point to note is that all the subjects were technically savvy before they joined this program. All rated themselves 7 or above on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) for their computer skills.

(2) Education and cultural background For Medial, E has been educated in the US for over 10 years, English is his main communicative language. German and French are the native languages for A and C respectively. English is their second language. All the three subjects had a very tight working schedule for their other coursework.

For Isle, except the E (Swede), A, C and the apprentice had all been educated in the US (A and apprentice are American, C is a Mexican). In using the English language (writing and speaking), E indicated some difficulty he faced, “some time its hard to ask the right Q and to understand the answer, but what to do ....” Similarly, all the members have very busy working schedule, “Find a time that is common for everybody is almost impossible!” said the apprentice.

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