A Methodology for the Study of the Effects of Communication Method on Design Review Effectiveness

It is necessary for product teams with diverse expertise to communicate during the product development process, notably during design reviews. As this expertise may be distributed across different geographic locations of an organization, design review teams are facing new challenges in effective communication. This paper presents the results of a controlled user study devised to examine the effectiveness of various communication methods for design reviews. Speech only, text only, and free communication methods were chosen to simulate current technologies commonly used in situations of geographic distribution. Primary results from the study include: group design reviews were approximately twice as effective as individual design reviews; free communication produced greater perceived effectiveness than speech only communication, speech only communication produced greater perceived effectiveness than text only communication; and certain personality factors, such as extroversion and intuition, may have contributed to higher productivity in design review teams.