Enhancing design project review board effectiveness through a visual collaborative approach

Abstract

Organisations with a clear focus on design and development need to carefully and strategically invest in projects. When collaboratively analysing various project proposals, decisions must be made at the macro level using a highlevel strategic perspective of the entire portfolio of projects while at the same time considering details at the micro level. It can be difficult for decision makers to absorb the wide range of information about technical, financial, aesthetic, ergonomic, market, and other project factors that need to be considered. Hence, there is a need to better support decision making teams as they collaborate to effectively access and evaluate information. This paper explores the synergies between research and practices in the domain of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and the disciplines of Design Innovation (DI) and Design Management (DM) to propose a new collaborative visual tool to assist design project review boards in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).