First Step Toward a Quantitative Approach to Evaluate Collaborative Tools

The product design process has been defined as a process which gathers multiple stakeholders working together during different steps to define a final product. Stakeholders have to approach the decision-making process effectively in order to design a product according to the wishes of the client. Phases in which decisions are made are mainly when stakeholders collaborate during design meetings using collaborative tools. Currently, various collaborative tools can be used in every situation of the product design process, but the choice of the most effective one is not easy. This article presents the first step toward a quantitative approach to evaluating collaborative tools. We focus on defining modifications to project data and on the impact of design meetings on the evolution of the project data. The conceptual approach of this paper is illustrated through an example.