Design Process Automation and Enhancement: A Collaborative Framework Based on Generative Design and BPMN

Modern Society is facing design problems with increasing complexities and their resolution requires specific knowledge, thus cross-disciplinary collaboration has become more frequent. Collaboration entails communication, interaction and idea-sharing between the participants and it tends to be more time-consuming and does not guarantee successful results. The origin can be found in conflictual situations during the collaboration, which include different progress statuses, antagonist objectives, overlapping activities, and difficulties in reaching an agreement between the parties. Consequences of a poor design process management include contradictory file versions, bringing efforts in clash detection and synchronisation, project delay and lower design quality.
The present paper proposes the design process optimisation that deals with interdisciplinary collaborations. In particular, it investigates an infrastructure that supports the actors' communication, their impacts on the design product and their involvement during the decision-making process. It relies on the digitalisation of design intents, expressing them as a set of relationships and parameters while a Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) platform provides the communication infrastructure. A prototype has been experimented, showing the feasibility of cross-disciplinary participation. It has proved the possibility of involving actors from different professional backgrounds, breaking down boundaries in the Design disciplines. In addition, the design process digitalisation allows its automation, bringing benefits in terms of time, conflicts, human resource reduction and therefore the overall design quality. The exploration that concerns how to create conditions for good results to emerge, rather than on a fixed design product, is known as metadesign.