Supporting the Evolution of Design Artifacts
with Representations of Context and Intent
G. Fischer, K. Nakakoji & J. Ostwald
Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science,
Campus Box 430,
University of Colorado, Boulder CO 80309
303 492-1349, {gerhard, kumiyo, ostwald}@cs.colorado.edu
Abstract
The design of complex artifacts is essentially an evolutionary process that
requires collaboration among stakeholders. Domain-oriented design environments
(DODEs) support the evolution of artifacts both by individual designers and by
designers participating in long-term, indirect collaboration. DODEs provide
representations for generic and specific levels of context. This context
supports individual designers by making the information space relevant to the
current design intent, and long-term collaboration among designers by allowing
them to ground their communication around design artifacts. We demonstrate our
approach using the @kid (Knowing-in-Design) system, articulate principles for
representations of context and intent, and discuss various approaches to
represent intent and context in design environments.
Keywords
Domain-oriented design environments, shared context,
explicit representations for intent,
communication of intent, evolution of design artifacts,
knowledge-based information delivery, long-term indirect collaboration
Acknowledgments
We thank the people at the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) at
the University of Colorado, who contributed to the
conceptual framework and the systems discussed in this paper. The
research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants No.
IRI- 9015441 and MDR-9253425; Software Research Associates, Inc. (Tokyo);
NYNEX Science and Technology Center; the Colorado Advanced Software Institute;
US WEST Advanced Technologies; and the National Science Foundation and the
Advanced Research Projects Agency under Cooperative Agreement No.
CDA-940860.
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