Kumiyo Nakakoji

Embedding critics in design environments

Human understanding in design evolves through a process of critiquing existing knowledge and consequently expanding the store of design knowledge. Critiquing is a dialogue in which the interjection of a reasoned opinion about a product or action triggers further reflection on or changes to the artifact being designed. Our work has focused on applying this successful human critiquing paradigm to human-computer interaction. We argue that computer-based critiquing systems are most effective when they are embedded in domain-oriented design environments, which are knowledge-based computer systems that support designers in specifying a problem and constructing a solution. Embedded critics play a number of important roles in such design environments: (1) they increase the designers understanding of design situations by pointing out problematic situations early in the design process; (2) they support the integration of problem framing and problem solving by providing a linkage between the design specification and the design construction; and (3) they help designers access relevant information in the large information spaces provided by the design environment. Three embedded critiquing mechanisms—generic, specific, and interpretive critics—are presented, and their complementary roles within the design environment architecture are described.

Embedding computer-based critics in the contexts of design

Computational critiquing mechanisms provide an effective form of computer-human interaction supporting the process of design. Critics embedded in domain-oriented design environments can take advantage of additional knowledge residing in these environments to provide less intrusive, more relevant critiques. Three classes of embedded critics have been designed, implemented, and studied: Generic critics use domain knowledge to detect problematic situations in the design construction. Specific critics take advantage of additional knowledge in the partial specification to detect inconsistencies between the design construction and the design specification. Interpretive critics are tied to perspective mechanisms that support designers in examining their artifact from different viewpoints.

Beyond the macho approach of artificial intelligence: empower human designers — do not replace them

Designers deal with ill defined and wicked problems that are characterized by fluctuating and conflicting requirements. Traditional design methodologies that are based on the separation between problem setting (analysis) and problem solving (synthesis) are inadequate for the solution of these problems. The supporting of design with computers requires a cooperative problem-solving approach that empowers designers with integrated, domain-oriented, knowledge-based design environments. The paper describes the motivation for the latter approach, and introduces an architecture for such design environments. It focuses on the integration of specification, construction, and a catalogue of prestored design objects in those environments to illustrate how such integrated design environments empower human designers. The Catalog Explorer system component, which is described in detail, assists designers in the location of examples in the catalogue that are relevant to the task at hand, as partially articulated by the current specification and construction. Users are thereby relieved of the tasks of forming queries or navigating in information spaces. The last part of the paper discusses the relationship of the work with the conceptual framework developed by Donald Schon.

Two-dimensional spatial positioning as a means for reflection in design

In the realm of computer support for design, developers have focused primarily on power and expressiveness that are important in framing a design solution. They assume that design is a series of calculated steps that lead to a clearly specified goal. The problem with this focus is that the resulting tools hinder the very process that is critical in early phases of a design task; the reflection-in-action process [15]. In the early phases, what is required as the most important ingredient for a design tool is the ability to interact in ways that require as little commitment as possible. This aspect is most evident in domains where two dimensions play a role, such as sketching in architecture. Surprisingly, it is equally true in linear domains such as writing. In this paper, we present our approach of using two-dimensional positioning of objects as a means for reflection in the early phases of a design task. Taking writing as an example, the ART (Amplifying Representational Talkback) system uses two dimensional positioning to support the early stages of the writing task. An eye-tracking user study illustrates important issues in the domain of computer support for design.

A framework that supports collective creativity in design using visual images

The goal of our research is to develop computer systems that support designers’ collective creativity; such systems support individual creative aspects in design through the use of representations created by others in the community. We have developed two systems, IAM-eMMa and EVIDII, that both aim at supporting designers in finding visual images that would be useful for their creative design task. IAMeMMa uses knowledge-based rules, which are constructed by other designers, to retrieve images related to a design task and infers the underlying “rationale” when a designer chooses one of the images. EVIDII allows designers to associate affective words and images, and then shows several visual representations of the relationships among designers, images and words. By observing designers interacting with the two systems, we have identified that systems for supporting collective creativity need to be based on design knowledge that (1) is contextualized, (2) is respectable and trustful, and (3) enables “appropriation” of a design task.

A case study of the evolution of Jun: an object-oriented open-source 3D multimedia library

Jun is a large open-source graphics and multimedia library. It is object-oriented and supports 3D geometry, topography and multimedia. This paper reviews the development of the Jun library from five perspectives: open-source, software evolution processes, development styles, technological support, and development data. It concludes with lessons learned from the perspective of a for-profit company providing open-source object-oriented software to the community.

Cognitive effects of animated visualization in exploratory visual data analysis

The goal of this research is to study the role and effects of the use of animated information visualization in the early stages of exploratory data analysis tasks. Despite the existence of a large body of research on information visualization, there is little known regarding how and when one should use and how to interact with animated visualization to help explore data. By animated visualization, we mean a type of information visualization technique that produces autonomous motions of representations. This research explored the issue from two aspects: what cognitive effects animated information visualization has, and what interactions people have with animated visualization when exploring data. We conducted two user studies to investigate each aspect, and identified research challenges for designing an interactive animated information visualization environment that supports the early stages of exploratory data analysis. These findings help us further study how to extend the notions developed in spatial visualization to temporal visualization - e.g. what focus+context means when applied to the time dimension in animated visualization.

Hands-on representations in a two-dimensional space for early stages of design

Abstract In design, problem analysis is as important as solution synthesis. Strategic knowledge is required not only for constructing a solution but also for framing a problem. While externalized representations play critical roles in design tasks, different types of representations are necessary for different stages of a design task. In early stages of a design task, design support tools need to provide hands-on representations with which a designer can easily perform trial-and-error and examine the whole as well as parts of the whole, allowing the designer to represent any levels of preciseness, as he/she likes. Sketching and drawing with paper and pencil provide an ideal representation for this process. But what about supporting design domains, such as writing or programming, where no sketching exists? In this paper, we argue that two-dimensional positioning of objects in a design support tool serves for the same purpose as sketching does for architectural design. Two-dimensional positioning allows a designer to produce hands-on representations that “talk back” to him/her without forcing the designer to formalize or verbalize what to be externalized. Two systems, ART for writing and RemBoard for component-based programming, illustrate the framework.

Supporting the evolution of design artifacts with representations of context and intent

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 longterm, 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 longterm collaboration among designers by allowing them to ground their communication around design artifacts. We demonstrate our approach using the KID (Knowing-inDesign) system, articulate principles for representations of context and intent, and discuss various approaches to represent intent and context in design environments.

Beyond object-oriented technology: where current approaches fall short

Object-oriented (OO) technology has been heralded as a solution to the problems of software engineering. The claims are that OO technology promotes understandability, extensibility, evolvabilty, reusability, and maintainability of systems and that OO systems are easy to understand and use. However, this technology has not been as successful as expected. An analysis of experiences and empirical studies reveals that the problem is not the technology per se but that the technology provides no support to software developers in performing the processes the technology requires. We present a cognitive model of software development that details the challenges software developers face in using OO technology. The model focuses on three aspects of software development-evolution, resue and redesign, and domain orientation. We motivate this model with a variety of firsthand experiences and use it to assess current OO technology. Further, we present tools and evaluations that substantiate parts of this model. The model and tools indicate directions for future software development environments, looking beyond the technological possibilities of OO languages and beyond the context of individual developers and projects.