Cloud BIM Interdisciplinary Concurrent Design Collaboration : Refining Experimental Tools by Assessing Interaction Dynamics in Two Experiments

In building design, effective collaboration and communication among stakeholders are crucial to project success. However, prevalent issues in current collaboration practices often lead to inefficiencies and waste in the design process, as well as inferior quality of designs, underscoring the critical need for improved collaborative strategies. This study explores the complex dynamics of interdisciplinary collaboration between design professionals working with a Cloud-based Building Information Modeling (CBIM) environment. The overall aim was to identify patterns that could reveal positive and negative collaborative practices in concurrent settings. Specifically, in this paper, we report on refining the experimental tool to evaluate design collaboration. Two experiments were performed in concurrent design sessions with different settings to compare both objective factors (communication methods, interaction frequency, and object boundaries) and subjective factors (cultural influences, participant experience, and personality differences). Through a systematic assessment of the participants' performance, task framing, and the outcome measures, the study enabled sharpening of the experimental design. The resulting experimental scenario places focus correctly on design development and communication for resolving cross-disciplinary design conflicts. This experimental tool provides an effective way to evaluate different modes of design collaboration using Cloud-based BIM tools.