For my Masters project at Georgia Institute of Technology, I am looking at how people collaborate on 3d projects online. This project fits into the domain of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, or CSCW. Much of the research in the field of CSCW so far has focused on collaboration in office work--things like how people write documents together, how knowledge is shared among co-workers, how people working off-site can effectively participate in conversations with the rest of their team, etc.

These things are important in artistic work as well, but my co-researchers and I suspect that how things get done may be different in artistic work than in other types of work. The overarching goal of this research project is to discover how artistic collaboration is different from other forms of collaboration and what can be done to make it easier for people to work together on artistic projects.

Right now I am specifically looking at collaboration in 3d projects on various forums and websites. I am running a survey to get general information about the characteristics of everyone who participates on the websites to find out about the context in which people are working. Then for more specific information, I am conducting telephone interviews with people about their experiences collaborating on 3d projects.

Ultimately all of the information gathered in the surveys and the interviews on 3d collaboration will be compiled and written up for my Masters project, which will (hopefully!) be completed in May. This may even be turned into a published journal article. The findings from this project will also continue to be used in future research on other types of collaborative artistic projects.

To participate in this survey, please click here.

All answers will be kept confidential and only reported as statistics. You do not need to put your name or any identifying information in there if you don't want to. This is part of a larger study, though, so if you'd like to participate further and don't mind providing an e-mail address I'm also looking for people to interview. You can leave an e-mail address in the form, or you can contact me directly.

Special thanks to Guest Columnist, Pam Griffith [haloedrain]. Renderosity artist and Coordinator for the Blender 3D Forum.