Intertwining knowledge delivery and elicitation: a process model for human-computer collaboration in design

摘要

Collaboration among designers can be described with an ‘action—reflection—critique’ model in which the explicit representation of the design contributes to a shared understanding and to the articulation of design knowledge. The paper describes how domain-oriented design environments based on this model support human-computer collaboration by intertwining knowledge delivery and elicitation. The KID (Knowing-In-Design) system has a shared understanding about the designers' ‘task at hand’ through a partial design requirement specification and a solution. KID delivers design knowledge relevant to this ‘task at hand’ and the delivery helps designers uncover tacit design concerns. Designers are encouraged to store the elicited design knowledge in KID, which results in the evolution of the system's knowledge bases. The evolution affects the system's subsequent behavior by tuning the delivery toward the designers. This cycle of knowledge delivery and elicitation processes supported by KID allows designers to gradually coevolve design requirements and solutions.