Speaker: Andrew Chen
Title: Towards Communicative Design Collaboration Through Process-Aware VersioningAbstract: Design is an iterative and collaborative process, yet existing version control and documentation tools struggle to capture the reasoning behind design decisions. While traditional versioning systems record changes, they often fail to make design intent explicit, leading to gaps in communication and misalignment in collaborative workflows. Hence, we explored the challenges of documenting creative design processes and examined how process-aware versioning can enhance communicative collaboration. Insights from this exploration inform the development of a prototype system, created through an iterative, research-through-design approach. In this talk, we present the journey towards the creation of a process-aware version control prototype to support the documentation of creative intent, while we also discuss the design implications for creating documentation systems in collaborative design workflows.Bio: Andrew Chen is a final year MSCS student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Sarah Sterman in the Process, Interaction, and Creativity Lab. As both a designer and computer science researcher, his work focuses on understanding design processes while developing both digital and tangible tools for improving collaborative design workflows. He has received multiple awards in the design scene as well as top conferences in HCI – earning the Best Demo Award at ACM UbiComp/ISWC ’22, honored as a Mark Winner at the Golden Pin Design Awards in 2019, named finalist in the Red Dot Design Awards in both 2019 and 2020, and listed as one of the Top 100 Emerging Designers in the Asian Next Generation Design Exhibition in 2021.
: Towards Communicative Design Collaboration Through Process-Aware Versioning
Abstract: Design is an iterative and collaborative process, yet existing version control and documentation tools struggle to capture the reasoning behind design decisions. While traditional versioning systems record changes, they often fail to make design intent explicit, leading to gaps in communication and misalignment in collaborative workflows. Hence, we explored the challenges of documenting creative design processes and examined how process-aware versioning can enhance communicative collaboration. Insights from this exploration inform the development of a prototype system, created through an iterative, research-through-design approach. In this talk, we present the journey towards the creation of a process-aware version control prototype to support the documentation of creative intent, while we also discuss the design implications for creating documentation systems in collaborative design workflows.
Bio: Andrew Chen is a final year MSCS student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised by Prof. Sarah Sterman in the Process, Interaction, and Creativity Lab. As both a designer and computer science researcher, his work focuses on understanding design processes while developing both digital and tangible tools for improving collaborative design workflows. He has received multiple awards in the design scene as well as top conferences in HCI – earning the Best Demo Award at ACM UbiComp/ISWC ’22, honored as a Mark Winner at the Golden Pin Design Awards in 2019, named finalist in the Red Dot Design Awards in both 2019 and 2020, and listed as one of the Top 100 Emerging Designers in the Asian Next Generation Design Exhibition in 2021.