sdr |
Description |
Design Rationale research is concerned with developing effective methods and computer-supported
representations for capturing, maintaining and re-using records of why designers have
made the decisions they have. Possibly the critical challenge is to negotiate the
capture bottleneck: how do we make the effort of recording rationale pay off not only
for people trying to understand the design at a later date, but also at capture time
for the designers? Or is rationale capture simply something that must be mandated
as a form of compulsory documentation?
We have investigated argumentation-based design rationale. Decisions in teams/organisations
are invariably made through debate and discussion, but a lot of the effort and reasoning
invested is often then lost, or locked in particular individuals' heads. In purely
representational terms, by making the issues, alternatives and trade-offs in a discussion
explicit, the context and rationale behind key decisions can be captured for future
reference and re-use. To cut to the chase, we have been exploring how to negotiate
the rationale capture cost-benefit tradeoff by providing tools for real time and asynchronous
knowledge representation: combining hypermedia (for flexible linking), modelling (for
explicit conceptualisation of problems) and meeting facilitation skills. This combination
turns out to be a powerful approach to a particular flavour of 'knowledge management',
with wider applicability than just software design. We call this overall approach
Compendium.Contact: Simon Buckingham-Shum |