ABSTRACT
Design processes are complex in nature and commonly involve multiple participants
or agents who bear individual (and often conflicting) views, goals, expertise, knowledge
and models. Constructing design solutions necessitates the coordination of distributed
knowledge, processes and decisions. This chapter suggests that coordination is a suit-
able concept for understanding design as a multi-agent process, and also for captur-
ing its generative and creative character. In this chapter, the theoretical understanding
of design as coordination is informed by computational modelling and simulation. In
particular, simulation is used as a means to think through the dimensions and charac-
teristics of coordination, and construct a coherent framework for its understanding.
