Special Issue Authors: Janet McDonnell; Peter Lloyd

This special issue of CoDesign presents a collection of studies of what happens through talk and gesture in design meetings. The work originated in an international research project1 in which 27 research groups with interests in design thinking were invited to analyse a common set of data comprising video recordings of four design meetings.

These naturally occurring meetings took place as parts of two very different design projects. Two of the meetings, recorded a few days apart, between specialists from mechanical, electronic and software design and ergonomics were concerned with teasing out possible solutions to issues associated with the design of a digital pen which would exploit a novel printing technology. The other pair of meetings, which took place several months apart, comprised discussions between a municipal architect and his clients to progress the design of a crematorium to the stage of detail needed for planning application.