The social role of a motorcycle prototype in fostering collaboration in a self-guided team of students

Objects have shaped human societies and the interaction between subjects; they permitted to increase in relationship complexity. Objects' role became so significant that it impacts subject-to-subject communication creating a common ground to enhance understanding. To achieve it, objects stretch their meaning outside their usefulness, evolving alongside the surrounding context and subjects; they acquire stratified meanings depending on how subjects engage with them. Precisely, this research analyses the social role of objects in a design process to leverage communication between students from different cultural backgrounds and fields of knowledge. Such objects establish abstract communication channels via a material infrastructure to improve brainstorming in designing and developing two racing motorcycle prototypes. The study highlights how students implement their competencies to enhance project goals promoting collaboration awareness between workgroups and designing related components. The goal is to understand how objects' roles influence communication and subject-to-subject relationships to develop more integrated project solutions.