Interdisciplinary design courses engage students in some of the most aggressive design activities. Students are usually from different disciplines and must synthesize and implement a system in a short period of time. One of the most common complaints from students working on these teams is the difficulty of coordinating schedules and connecting with their team members. The students identified two services that, based on personal experience, would facilitate the design process. The first is the ability to instantaneously locate team members on campus.
Students have a large number of meetings held at various times and various places.
Students often are confused about where the next group meeting is to be held. The ability to observe the team s members geographical location on campus enables them to determine where the meeting is and when a member who is late to the meeting might arrive. The second service is based upon the observation that once the meeting starts, when a member arrives late the meeting stops to brief the late member. As soon as the briefing brings everyone up to the same level of knowledge, another team member might arrive necessitating yet another briefing. The service provides a shared meeting space that remote members can participate in by actively drawing or reviewing the drawings that have been created since the beginning of the meeting.