Understanding the role of iterations is an important topic within design research and design practice. Iterations often involve rework and thus often increased costs and completion time. Many theories and studies ascribe iterations either to the social or technical complexity of the design process. Here, we join the two perspectives by analysing metadata of more than 3000 documents produced during the design of a biomass power plant. We gain insights by using network analysis and by visualising the temporal unfolding of the design process. Subsequently, we develop a statistical model to rigorously test multiple hypotheses showing that iterations are a combination of technical and social factors. The paper shows that iterations increase when the number of stakeholders/participants increases and when external suppliers are involved. Iterations are lower in presence of integrative activities. Furthermore, the paper shows the existence of synergistic interactions between nodes’ in-going and out-going flow in both activity and team networks associated with an increase in iterations.

中文翻译：

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社会和技术因素导致的迭代：来自大型设计项目的经验证据

理解迭代的作用是设计研究和设计实践中的一个重要课题。迭代通常涉及返工，因此通常会增加成本和完成时间。许多理论和研究将迭代归因于设计过程的社会或技术复杂性。在这里，我们通过分析生物质发电厂设计过程中产生的 3000 多份文档的元数据，将这两种观点结合起来。我们通过使用网络分析和可视化设计过程的时间展开来获得洞察力。随后，我们开发了一个统计模型来严格测试多个假设，表明迭代是技术和社会因素的组合。该论文表明，当利益相关者/参与者的数量增加以及涉及外部供应商时，迭代会增加。存在集成活动时，迭代次数较低。此外，该论文表明，在与迭代增加相关的活动和团队网络中，节点的传入和传出流之间存在协同交互。