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Messy Work in Virtual Worlds: Exploring Discovery and Synthesis in Virtual Teams

Dossick, Carrie Sturts(1). (2014). Messy Work in Virtual Worlds: Exploring Discovery and Synthesis in Virtual Teams. Lecture Notes In Computer Science (including Subseries Lecture Notes In Artificial Intelligence And Lecture Notes In Bioinformatics), 8683, 134 – 142.

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Abstract

The challenges of engineering team collaboration‚Äîestablishing trust, fostering productive informal communication, cultivating knowledge exchange‚Äîare often exacerbated in virtual teams by geographical separation as well as team members‚Äô cultural and linguistic differences. Researchers have observed that powerful collaboration in collocated teams is supported by shared visualizations with which the team engages in informal, flexible and active ways. In studying virtual team interactions in a virtual world known as the CyberGRID, we see that just as with AEC collocated teams, shared visualizations were instrumental for the teams as they define, understand, and generate knowledge when working on interrelated tasks. Emerging from this analysis is an empirically supported theory that while avatar-model interaction supports mutual discovery, more messy interactions of brainstorming, knowledge exchange and synthesis requires flexible, active, and informal shared visualizations. ¬© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.

Keywords

Communication; Flow Visualization; Information Technology; Knowledge Management; Visualization; Building Information Model; Bim; Collaboration; Geographical Separation; Global Virtual Teams; Informal Communication; Linguistic Differences; Virtual Team Interactions; Virtual Worlds

Applied Research Consortium

The Applied Research Consortium (ARC) is rooted in the idea that collaboration across academia and industry will accelerate progress in our fields. ARC brings together an interdisciplinary group of built environment firms with faculty experts and graduate student researchers at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments (CBE) to address the most vexing challenges that firms face today. The next generation of practitioners and scholars apply their creativity and knowledge of the latest scholarship and practices, accelerating progress and preparing for future work at the leading edge of our fields.

Through the ARC initiative, built environment firms with a presence in the Seattle area partner with College of Built Environments graduate students and faculty for research that is targeted at the specific needs of the firms. Firms work with faculty to shape research priorities for the consortium based on their needs and the latest research in our fields. ARC then matches graduate student fellows with firms for multi-quarter applied research projects that directly relate to the firms’ current work. Faculty mentors and supervisors at firms work with the fellows, contributing to their academic and professional development in the program and ensuring that the projects fit with longer term research goals.

The unique set of fields under the College of Built Environments umbrella—architecture, construction management, landscape architecture, real estate, and urban design and planning—allows ARC projects to leverage creative, interdisciplinary approaches to the most vexing problems that firms–and the disciplines themselves–face today.

ARC builds on CBE’s prioritization of equity and diversity, thus ensuring that the next generation of built environments practitioners and scholars bring the broadest possible range of perspectives and experiences to their work.

Tomás Méndez Echenagucia

Tomás Méndez Echenagucia is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s department of Architecture. His research is focused on the use of simulation, computational geometry and optimization algorithms to make building components more sustainable. He holds a double degree in Architecture from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Politecnico di Torino, as well as a PhD in Architecture and Building Design also from the Politecnico di Torino. He has practiced as an architect and consultant in Europe and South America. His work includes several research pavilions and prototypes, including the “Armadillo Vault” for the Venice Biennale in 2016 and the ETH Pavilion in New York City in 2015. He completed a five year postdoctoral researcher position at the Block Research Group in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich, where he was a project lead in the HiLo research unit. Tomás is a co-developer of the COMPAS framework, an ecosystem of modeling, design and simulation tools, ranging from Finite Element Analysis to geometric acoustics.

Catherine De Almeida

Trained as a landscape architect and building architect, Catherine’s research examines the materiality and performance of waste landscapes through exploratory methods in design research and practice. Her work has ranged in scale from large bio-cultural and sacred indigenous landscapes, to site design and architectural work, to furniture design and materials research. Through her design work, research, teaching and engagement, she explores ways of creating multiplicity within a single entity, space, building or site to form greater efficiencies and performative capabilities in design. Since 2014, Catherine has developed her design research—landscape lifecycles—as a holistic approach that synthesizes multiple programs, forming hybrid assemblages in the transformation of waste landscapes and materials. She uses landscape lifecycles as a framework for investigating the performance, visibility, citizenships, emotions and injustices of waste materials and landscapes.

For several years, she was a researcher for the Materials Collection at Harvard University, where she analyzed and developed new methods for the lifecycle assessment of materials used in built environments. This led to a passion for incorporating the lifecycles of materials and sites in the multi-scalar design of waste landscapes. She was awarded a Penny White Fellowship to research the lifecycle and use of geothermal energy in Iceland, which led to her graduate thesis, “Energy Afterlife: Choreographing the Geothermal Gradient of Reykjanes, Iceland,” and has been published and presented in various outlets. More recently, she was awarded several grants to continue her research in Iceland, focused on the Blue Lagoon and its waste reuse strategies. She continues to expand this research through documenting case studies of waste landscapes that have evolved from bottom-up processes, advancing landscape lifecycles as a critical lens for evaluating the landscape performance of existing sites that engage with waste reuse.

Before joining the Department of Landscape Architecture at UW, Catherine was an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she developed courses examining the multi-scalar implications of materiality and waste. Prior to this, Catherine was a lecturer at Cornell University where she taught undergraduate and graduate design studios focused on brownfield transformation. She was also an Associate at Whitham Planning and Design in Ithaca, New York where she worked as a landscape architect and planner on numerous urban infill projects, including the transformation of a deindustrialized Superfund site into a mixed-use district known as the Chain Works District.

Catherine received her MLA from Harvard University and her BARCH from Pratt Institute. She is a certified remote drone pilot, an Honorary Member of the Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts, and a Fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies. Her work has been supported by numerous grants, and recognized in national and international publications and media outlets, including the Landscape Research Record, Journal of Landscape Architecture, and Journal of Architectural Education.

Renée Cheng

Renée Cheng joined the College of Built Environments as dean on January 1, 2019. Dean Cheng comes from the University of Minnesota where she was a professor, associate dean of research, head of the school of architecture, and directed an innovative graduate program linking research with practice and licensure. Prior to UMN, she taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Arizona. She is a graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Harvard College.

A licensed architect, her professional experience includes work for Pei, Cobb, Freed and Partners and Richard Meier and Partners before founding Cheng-Olson Design. Dean Cheng has been honored twice as one of the top 25 most admired design educators in the United States by DesignIntelligence. She has received numerous honors and awards including the 2017 Lean Construction Institute Faculty Award and was named to the American Institute of Architecture’s College of Fellows in 2017.

Cheng is a leader in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and advocates for equity in the field of architecture and in the practices related to the built environment. Recently, Cheng led the research effort for the AIA guides for equitable practice in the workplace. Cheng has pioneered research surrounding the intersection of design and emerging technologies, including work on industry adoption of Integrated Project Delivery, Building Information Modeling and Lean.

Lynne Manzo

Lynne Manzo, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture. She teaches in both the BLA and MLA programs. Dr. Manzo is also an Affiliate Faculty member in the PhD Program in the Built Environment and the Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning, and an Adjunct Professor in the UW School of Social Work.

As an Environmental Psychologist by training, Manzo specializes in the study of the interrelationships between people and their physical surroundings. Her view of the environment includes not only natural and built settings, but also the socio-cultural and political milieu that shape the appearance, meanings and uses of space.

Manzo’s interests and areas of research focus on people-place relationship in urban space through a social justice lens, with particular attention to place attachment, place meaning & identity, as well as the politics of place. She has spent years conducting housing research and participating in advocacy efforts for affordable housing. This includes investigations of grassroots organizing and building rehabilitation efforts among residents of landlord-abandoned buildings in Harlem and the South Bronx, and conducting research for the Seattle Housing Authority, the King County Housing Authority and the Bremerton Housing Authority to understand the impacts of public housing demolition and redevelopment on low-income communities.

Currently, Manzo’s work focuses on place change, displacement and anti-displacement strategies. In one of her research projects, she is working with the non-profit, community-based organization Wa Na Wari, which “creates space for Black homeownership, possibility, belonging, and artistic creativity” in Seattle’s historically Black Central District, to conduct research that supports their ongoing anti-displacement organizing work. Related to this, in the Spring of 2020, Manzo led an advanced, graduate-level research studio on anti-displacement strategies with King County as the client, focusing on the diverse communities of Skyway-West Hill and White Center/North Highline (report forthcoming). These majority minority communities are currently under serious threat of gentrification and displacement.

Tyler Sprague

Tyler S. Sprague PE., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, with an Adjunct appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He holds engineering degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington (UW) and worked professionally as a structural engineer before completing a Ph.D. in architectural history in the College of Built Environments at the UW.

Dr. Sprague’s research investigates the intersection of architecture and structural engineering, in both post-war modern architecture and the present. He has written on the rise of concrete skyscrapers in the Pacific Northwest, the engineering of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, and other topics. In 2019, he published Sculpture on a Grand Scale: Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism (italicize, and link: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295745619/sculpture-on-a-grand-scale/) with the University of Washington Press. This text explores Christiansen’s prolific work in thin-shell concrete which culminated in the largest free-standing concrete dome in the world: the Seattle Kingdome.

He currently serves on the board of docomomo wewa (the regional chapter of the international preservation advocacy group), and the Construction History Society of America.

Chris Meek

Christopher Meek, AIA, IES is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Washington and a registered architect. He is Director of the Integrated Design Lab (IDL) at the University’s College of Built Environments and the Center for Integrated Design (CID). In this role, he consults with design teams in the Pacific Northwest and nationally with a focus on building energy performance, daylighting, visual comfort, electric lighting, and climate responsive design. Mr. Meek teaches graduate and undergraduate level courses on building design, daylighting, electric lighting, and building technology at the UW Department of Architecture and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research has been funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, regional utilities, New Buildings Institute, the Illuminating Engineering Society, the American Institute of Architects, and the National Science Foundation. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington he worked in architectural practice in Washington State, New Mexico, and New Orleans, LA.

He is co-author of Daylighting Design in the Pacific Northwest published in 2012 by the University of Washington Press and Daylighting and Integrated Lighting Design published in 2014 by Routledge.

Elizabeth Golden

Elizabeth Golden is an architect and an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, where she teaches in the areas of design, materials, and building technology. Her teaching, academic research, and creative work are dedicated to revealing the systemic complexities that shape our physical and cultural realities. Golden investigates the relationship between people and their environments, both at the micro and macro scales, analyzing architecture as an index to its larger cultural context.

Golden is a licensed architect in Washington and New York state and has practiced nationally and internationally for over 25 years. She holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University GSAPP and a Bachelor of Architecture (professional degree) from the University of Arkansas. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education. Underpinning her practice is an ongoing analysis of the complex relationship of architecture and the built environment to systemic issues such as social marginalization and economic globalization. Together, her built and speculative work, research, and community activism demonstrate architecture’s dynamic potential to drive social change.

Research + Practice

Golden cultivates a reciprocal relationship between her research and practice, treating them as integral parts of an interconnected feedback loop. She frequently collaborates on design initiatives that combine expertise from the University of Washington, local nonprofits, governmental agencies, and other educational institutions. A recent example is the Seattle Street Sink and Clean Hands Collective, a community effort to promote hand hygiene in the midst of COVID-19. Her collaborative projects have received numerous honors including a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), an Award of Merit from AIA Seattle, and an R+D Award from Architect Magazine. They have been published internationally including features in Architectural Record, Architectural Review, and the BBC World Service.

Across her research and teaching, Golden is committed to transforming the discipline of architecture by building productive connections between academia and professional practice. Her recent book Building from Tradition: Local Materials and Methods in Contemporary Architecture (Routledge, 2018) offers a critical analysis of traditional building practices and their contemporary resurgence in the context of globalization. A belief in the power of collective intelligence drives the practice, with the expertise of local professionals, craftspeople, and user groups integral to each project. Ultimately, Golden is concerned with the mutual exchange between people and place, studying ways in which architecture can evoke our shared humanity.

Carrie Sturts Dossick

Professor Carrie Sturts Dossick, P.E. is a Professor of Construction Management and the Associate Dean of Research in the College of Built Environments, University of Washington. Dr. Dossick also holds an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and is currently the Vice-Chair of the National BIM Standard -US Planning Committee. Dr. Dossick co-directs the Communication, Technology, and Organizational Practices lab in the Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC). Dr. Dossick has over two decades of research and teaching experience focused on emerging collaboration methods and technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM). She is an active member of the National Institute of Building Sciences BIM Council, and the Academic Interoperability Coalition (AiC). Current research and teaching projects include Cybersecurity for Large Institutional owners, a Pankow funded project on Owner Decision-making and Project Delivery, The Core BIM Module for the National BIM Standard US, an Introduction to BIM for Construction Management Certificate with Skanska, a new online Certificate for digital fabrication workflows for concrete formwork with Turner Construction, and the IB Index with the University of Technology Sydney. Recent work includes BIM-based information exchange between design, construction and operations, BIM Standards and Processes for the Port of Seattle, the use of Virtual Reality for Facilities Management Training, and BIM workflows for Preconstruction Services. Recent Technical Publications. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Education, General Services Administration, Mechanical Contractors Association of Western Washington, Sound Transit, Skanska USA Building, Mortenson Company, University of Washington Royalty Research Fund, University of Washington Capital Projects and Facilities services.