Developing Strategic Alliances: A Framework for Collaborative Negotiation in Design

This work applies a theory-based framework of collaborative negotiation to some of the disputes that regularly arise during group design. Although the framework was developed to provide general support for group work, this paper focuses on its use as a design tool. The framework, embodied in our system NegotiationLens, has four facets. It: 1. Provides a negotiation method intended to produce gain for all parties. 2. Provides an efficient process for conflict resolution. 3. Develops working alliances. 4. Lets parties decide quickly when they should go their separate ways. The framework produces the above results by: • Helping parties develop well-reasoned and clearly articulated points of view (Adelson and Jordan, 1991; Conklin and Yakemovic, 1991; Conklin and Begeman, 1988; MacLean et al ., 1991). • Creating a context of committment and respect. • Moving negotiating parties away from an adversarial stance and into a collaboration. • Allowing joint construction of solutions that are more beneficial than the unilateral solutions each party initially brought to the table. We present our framework for collaborative negotiation, describe NegotiationLens, and present two cases in which it was used. We present a third case, a large design project with recurrent design conflicts, and argue how NegotiationLens could have been of benefit there.