Measuring sharedness of mental models in architectural and engineering design teams

The study presented in this paper investigates the development of sharedness of mental models in situations of design problem solving. A basic assumption is that sharedness of individual mental models is attained through verbal communication. Thus, the basic theoretical framework we developed is based on the classification of verbal communication occurring during the design process. The application of the theoretically based classification focuses on the dynamic development of mental models in heterogeneous design teams. The empirical study is based on observational data from a meeting of two design teams belonging to the engineering and architectural discipline. Whereas sharedness is supposed to be attained from the earlier phases of the design process, this might vary for design acts in which explicit coordination is still necessary. We explore coordination in both teams through two main phases of the design meetings.