Approximately
80% of the survey respondents who answered the question "Do you have
any interest in using the internet for business?" answered yes.
There were asked
about how the internet could be useful to designers of which 88%,
58% and 66% thought that it would be useful for communications, collaboration
and selling/marketing respectively. Of those who responded to the
collaboration question, three-quarters (42% of respondents) also thought
that developing ideas collaboratively using the internet would be
useful. We believe that this response demonstrates that there is a
demand for a tool which could support such a collaboration.
There have been
huge advances made possible by inexpensive internet connections and
low hardware costs. Mid-price range machines have the speed to process
video images at an acceptable rate. This has been accompanied by the
recent release of the free software Microsoft NetMeeting. The most
exciting feature is the application-sharing which enables the sharing
of any Microsoft Windows based application between two remote locations.
Only one party need have the application running on their computer.
We
envisaged that a suite could be developed specifically for textile
designers to collaborate together. It would not be a complete replacement
for face to face meetings but would be helpful in-between to allow
individuals to guide the design process collectively. Such a suite
would contain a scanned image collection which could possible be arranged
in themes stored in a virtual collection (See below). The two parties
would be able to sort this collection if required, edit the images,
explore ideas with the images and annotate them. A typical scenario
might be between a freelance designer and agent. The designer may
have a meeting arranged with the agent at a date in the future. Using
the suite, the two agent could offer guidance as to which designs
would do well and how they could be elaborated on.
