Mapping planners' information-visualisation requirements for 4D CAD developments

This paper reports investigations into the needs and requirements of information visualisation for designers and building planners. The study firstly discusses current CAD visualisation approaches for planning. Current user preferences are established and measured from interviews with eleven construction professionals including planners, designers and contract managers. The resulting model predicts planners’ requirements for information visualisation. The underpinning research method is that of Ethnographic research. The tools used allow qualitative attributes of data-display formats to be established. Interview transcriptions were coded and structured in grids containing ‘hierarchy trees’ and cluster ‘diagrams’ to identify relationships between participants and the topics of discussion. Planners’ specific priorities and requirements for future software development are presented as principal components. The paper concludes with recommendations on two areas being firstly, directions for further developments in visualisation and secondly, implementation and consolidation of new planning tools.