Problem Statement

The design process exhibits a certain friction in its digital communicative processes that is holding back the AEC industry from fully capitalising on the digital revolution.

The original research question, as set out by the InnoChain call, was to analyse how complex digitally based design can be communicated and collated internally, within a design team, and externally, with the various stakeholders involved in the design process. I have broken this down into three more specific questions that each tackle a critical aspect of digital communication in the AEC industry:

Literature Review

This chapter is probably my favourite one. In it, I am establishing a theoretical base around communication in AEC and its relationship with the wickedness of design problems.

The most important takeaway is that communication is an integrated technical process and social phenomena. The social, inferential aspects of it have been neglected in recent research and discourse—or coerced into patterns shaped primarily by metaphors derived from its technical facets.

Methodology & Speckle

My research unfolded in the context of a living laboratory. In late 2015, I started developing Speckle as a means to contrast current approaches to new ones. Speckle also served (and keeps serving, but that's a different story!) as a vehicle to gather both quantitative and qualitative data in real world scenarios—not just artificial case studies.

Data Representation

Ontological Revision; Composability vs. Completeness

In this chapter, I am primarily investigating whether sketching with digital representations of design data is beneficial for the design process. To do so, I am comparing Speckle's self-describing, composable object model strategy against an ontologically complete “one standard” approach.

Key Sections

Data Classification

Centralised, File Based Classification vs. Curated, Object Based System.

In this chapter I make a case for data curation. Sharing files implies a certain bulkiness of thought, and disembodies data from its meaning. Thus, I am looking at how changing the paradigm to an object-based, curatorial approach influences communication in the design process.

Key Sections

Data Transaction

Enabling Communicative Exchanges: Nextness, Sequentiality.

Message sequentiality (order) and "nextness" (closness) all contribute to a productive exchange of information - they are part of the communicative contract people engaged in dialogue enter into. In this chapter, I investigate how communicative contracts can be upheld—or shaped—in a digital environment.

Sections

Discussion

I'm making three important points in this chapter. First, you can't have a productive design process without composability and ontological flexibility at the data level. Second, the single source of truth metaphor that plagues AEC is wrongly derived from a technical model of communication - it's time to let it go. Last, data centralisation won't work - it's against the DNA of AEC itself.