1 Managing Effective Communication in Knitwear Design Claudia Eckert Department of Design and Innovation The Open University Milton Keynes, UK 1 Introduction Successful communication between different team members is a vital factor for the success of any collaborative work. Often communication fails and the efficiency of the design process and the quality of the product suffer. The strength of a design team often lies in its diversity, but diversity can also made teamwork problematic. Every person has a particular personality and works in a different way; each brings different expertise and experience to the task. Design management must ensure that the diversity of a design team is its strength rather its downfall. This paper presents an analysis of the communication difficulties in the knitwear industry, where a number of problems faced by multidisciplinary design teams in many industries can be seen in particularly sharp relief. It proposes management strategies to alleviate some of these difficulties. Knitwear design is the creation of a technically complex product according to aesthetic considerations – the relationship between the appearance of a knitted structure and its structural characteristics is subtle and complex. While being an important industry in its own right, the knitwear industry shares important characteristics with both other aesthetic design industries and engineering design. Knitwear design is shared primarily between the designers, who design the visual and tactile appearance of a garment based on fashion trends and customer requirements, and the knitwear technicians 1 , who are responsible for programming knitting machines to realise these design ideas. The designers undertake the conceptual design of the garment, which as in other industries is usually skeletal, vague and tentative. In developing the knitting machine programs the technicians work out the detailed design. The shape technicians 2 construct the cutting pattern for the shape of the garment and assemble the sample garments. (In some smaller companies this job is done by the designers.) The knitwear design team is small compared with those designing complex engineering products, but is typical in different team members have different responsibilities, interests and expertise but their collaboration is essential for the success of the product. In knitwear design significant inefficiencies in the process can be directly attributed to communication problems. This paper points out the multiplicity and interconnectedness of the factors contributing to communication problems in design. Some of these are difficulties in communicating early 1 Normally referred to as “technicians”. The term is changed to highlight the similarities with the shape technicians. 2 Normally referred to as “pattern cutters” or “make up people”. Both terms are ambiguous, as pattern cutter also is used for the person who cuts garment pieces in production; and make up person also refers to somebody who only assembles the garment in production.