Communication is an essential part of any design process. Problems in design communication can lead to delays, mistakes, and even the ultimate failure of projects. Design communication is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon to study. It is about products and services that may or may not yet exist and includes abstraction to possible future situations. Communication can be formal or informal. For example, it can happen at the same time (synchronously) or at different times (asynchronously) and it has different directions, such as from manager to designer (top-down), from designer to manager (bottom-up), between designers, and between designers and the users. Transmitted information can take many different forms. It can be spoken, written, or drawn and can be sent and received using different media. Further, a designer may work alone. More likely, however, the design process is executed in large teams with members from differing backgrounds.

This Special Issue encourages investigation of a number of focus areas, including the following:

• • design communication during different design stages of the product;

• • design communication in different situations, for example, critical situations;

• • interface communication (between a product and a designer, between designers, between design teams, between companies, between designers and society as a whole);

• • organization of a design team to enable adequate communication, for example, the impact of team diversity or remote or colocated teams on the design process;

• • emergence of shared understanding through design communication;

• • communication patterns in design meetings;

• • impact of affective design communication on the design process;

• • nature of informal and formal communication in the design process;

• • visualization of design rationale as design communication;

• • interpretation of intent from sketches and other forms of representation;

• • using artifacts, such as drawings and prototypes, as media in the design process;

• • the role and importance of the shape of products, for example, product language;

• • understanding and supporting the information requirements of a design engineer;

• • multimodal design communication; and

• • the future of design communication in practice and research into design communication.

In investigating the topics listed above, we often draw on insights and use methods from a number of scholarly disciplines to frame the phenomenon observed, to analyze our findings, and to draw our conclusions. Conscious or not, explicit or not, we as design researchers view the subject matter from a certain disciplinary angle. Perhaps we even use several. Ideally, the authors of this Special Issue will draw out the angle chosen and make its applicability and usefulness to design practice and research explicit.

We welcome papers that are empirical, conceptual, theoretical, or speculative.

• • Empirical papers perhaps report on the practice of communication in design using field studies or experiments.

• • Conceptual papers might reflect on existing discussions in the literature.

• • Theoretical papers may explore one perspective or create an in-depth comparison between different theories of communication and their application to designing products.

• • Speculative papers might describe the nature and future of design communication.

Together, the papers are intended to show an overview of the fields of research that contribute to the study of communication in design.

All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by at least three reviewers. The selection for publication will be made on the basis of these reviews. High quality papers not selected for this Special Issue may be considered for standard publication in AI EDAM.

Information about the format and style required for AI EDAM papers can be found at www.cs.wpi.edu/~aiedam/Instructions/

Note that all inquiries and submissions for Special Issues go to the Guest Editors, not to the Editor in Chief.

Important Dates

Intent to submit (Title and Abstract):

Before 31 January 2011

Submission deadline for full papers:

1 September 2011

Notification and reviews to authors:

15 January 2012

Revised version submission deadline:

1 May 2012

Final version submission deadline:

1 October 2012

Guest Editors

Maaike Kleinsmann

Anja Maier

Department of Product Innovation Management

Department of Management Engineering

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering

Technical University of Denmark

Delft University of Technology

Produktionstorvet, Building 425

Landbergstraat 15, Delft 2628CE

DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby

The Netherlands

Denmark

E-mail: M.S.Kleinsmann@tudelft.nl

E-mail: amai@man.dtu.dk