Design reviews are central activities in product development, bringing together cross-functional teams to evaluate design proposals, identify issues, and decide on the progression of work. As product development becomes increasingly digital and distributed, these reviews are mediated by tools such as CAD software, videoconferencing platforms, and, more recently, extended reality (XR) systems. These technologies fundamentally shape how reviewers access shared product models, coordinate attention, and form a shared understanding. However, current industrial practice relies heavily on one person’s screen sharing with the rest of the group, which limits direct interaction with product design representations and creates friction in communication and coordination.
This thesis examines how collaborative technologies can better support interaction and coordination in design reviews and develops practical guidance for their deployment in industrial settings. The research adopts a design-oriented mixed-method approach, combining field studies, experiments, and participatory workshops. Field observations of distributed design reviews identified four recurring friction situations: requesting specific viewpoints, indicating specific elements, expressing design change ideas, and evaluating ergonomics. Subsequent laboratory experiments and qualitative observations in shared 3D environments isolated how specific technological configurations, such as independent navigation and shared spatial scenes, influence how teams distribute attention and maintain common ground.
Synthesizing the results, the thesis identifies a set of core affordances that collaboration systems for design reviews need to support: shared spatial presence around the product model, in-scene deictic indication (pointing), and independent navigation with mechanisms for following a presenter. These affordances are translated into a framework and a set of practical guidelines that connect interaction capabilities with the preparation, conduct, and documentation of design reviews. These guidelines were developed and validated through workshops with two automotive companies, confirming the guidelines’ clarity and applicability in real-world practice. Collectively, the thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of technology-mediated collaboration and provides actionable methods for integrating advanced digital tools into engineering workflows.