Students’ use of social media in collaborative design: a case study of an advanced interior design studio

Social media, essential in everyday activity, have been frequently used in the performance of collaborative tasks as well as in collaborative learning in academia due to their interactive and open nature. Thus, understanding design students’ selective use and evaluation of social media in collaborative design is worthwhile. This paper reports a case study of design students’ use of social media in the collaborative design process in an advanced interior design studio class. A total of 27 junior interior design students at a university in Korea participated in the study, engaging in a semester-long team project in pairs or trios. At the end of the semester, each team participated in (a) an open-ended survey questionnaire about the types of social media they used and the pros and cons of each and (b) a design charrette to suggest an ideal platform supportive of collaboration. The results show that students (a) used social media in design collaboration primarily for the purposes of searching, sharing, and communicating; (b) frequently used social media that supported more than one purpose; and (c) engaged in three design processes, comprising identification of issues, concept development, and design development. In addition, the features students needed most were (a) ease of management and classification of resources and data, (b) ease of sharing design task files, and (c) seamless integration of the social media in searching, sharing, and communicating. The results of the study will help design educators understand students’ behaviors with social media in a collaborative design studio and needs for more effective design collaboration.