Paul Rodgers

Visible ideas: information patterns of conceptual sketch activity

The successful design and manufacture of todays increasingly complex engineering products relies to an ever greater extent upon the production and communication of information. The majority of design research to date has concentrated on supporting the information-rich latter stages of design and concerned itself with the distribution of product descriptions for the embodiment and manufacture of products. The conceptual stages of design, typified by vague knowledge and shifting goals, have been excluded from the research investigation. While computer processing power, storage facilities and organisational capabilities could prove useful within the early stages of design what tangible evidence do designers produce that could be captured by digital techniques? This paper studies designers at work in the early stages of design, concentrating on the visible sketching component of the design activity so that it might be understood and its efficiency subsequently improved by computer support.

Web-based knowledge management for distributed design

Contemporary product design is a knowledge-intensive process undertaken by virtual teams dispersed across multiple organizations. Successful design requires contextual knowledge of the target market. Knowledge management and decision support can assist in this task. By considering AI as a form of writing, we can represent knowledge in a transparent and modifiable form, which better supports the multiplicity of contexts required in real design. To assist designers in conceptual-design evaluation, we have implemented the WebCADET Web-based decision-support tool. Based on a knowledge-server architecture, WebCADET operates in design-guidance, knowledge-viewing and knowledge-capture modes. We discuss our efforts in developing WebCADET and deploying four WebCADET servers at different locations for various applications.

An Investigation and Review of the Knowledge Needs of Designers in SMEs

Small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in new product development (NPD) face many challenges including minimizing NPD costs, meeting high quality demands, and reducing NPD timescales. It is generally acknowledged, however, that any organization can only realistically hope to meet two or three of these goals. For instance, companies might be able to deliver high quality products in a short time - but this will generally require substantial investment to achieve. In an attempt to meet these demands designers may have to use vast amounts of knowledge during the design of complex multidisciplinary products. This often involves the utilization of large amounts of specialist knowledge and information which is usually poorly documented and difficult to access, but is crucial to successful NPD. There is an obvious need, therefore, for some sort of computer support that will assist the designer through the complex and multidisciplinary design process. This paper presents the initial findings from a revi...

The role of artificial intelligence as 'text' within design

The paper describes a new approach to artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in design. This approach argues that AI can be seen as `text, or in other words as a medium for the communication of design knowledge and information between designers. This paper will apply these ideas to reinterpreting an existing knowledge-based system (KBS) design tool, that is, CADET—a product design evaluation tool. The paper will discuss the authorial issues, amongst others, involved in the development of AI and KBS design tools by adopting this new approach. Consequently, the designers rights and responsibilities will be better understood as the knowledge medium, through its concern with authorship, returns control to users rather than attributing the system with agent status.

Managing knowledge in dispersed design companies

Many organisations now adopt flexible and dispersed working practices to meet the increasingly complex and varied demands of the global marketplace. In this climate, the success of the new product development process is largely dependent upon the effective capture, storage, representation, use and reuse of knowledge. This paper describes WebCADET, a WWW-based knowledge server, that aims to address the key knowledge management issues in dispersed design companies by providing effective and efficient mechanisms for the capture, storage and use/reuse of design knowledge. The paper describes the initial findings of a user testing exercise of WebCADET within an industrial setting.

Writing and Sharing of Rule-text Heuristics to Support Dispersed Design Communities

In recent years design has evolved from an individual activity to one where multiple participants with diverse skills collaborate on a project. Simultaneously, emerging advances in networking technologies now offer greater support to dispersed design teams. As a consequence of these social, cultural and technological developments, modern design is a highly social activity carried out between communities of individuals with disparate skills and perspectives (Bucciarelli, 1988). This paper presents a novel theoretical approach, ‘AI as writing’, to the development of network-based support tools for dispersed design teams. This approach views these tools as a form of, and extension to, writing, with the tool as a ‘knowledge medium’ (Stefik, 1986) for expressing and communicating knowledge. This paradigm is particularly appropriate in the domain of consumer products which relies heavily upon context-specific knowledge (regional, cultural, environmental, etc.,) applicable to the intended market (Harel and Prabbu, 1999; Hoft and Ito, 1999), and where there is unlikely to be a single ‘correct’ design. The AI as writing approach has been implemented in WebCADET — a web-based conceptual design support tool. This incorporates a knowledge capture facility allowing designers to ‘author’ and ‘publish’ new rule-texts by amending existing rule-texts or ‘writing’ completely new rule-texts. The eventual aim is to create a networked ‘community’ of WebCADET knowledge servers supporting dispersed designers with context-specific design knowledge.

Computer supported co-operative design: towards effective solutions

Many stages in the product design and development process, particularly the latter stages, are well supported by computers. Computer Supported Co-operative Design (CSCD), however, embraces the use of computers to support a greater number of various tasks such as relationships (e.g. designer to designer communications), processes (e.g. CAD/CAM) and specific design tasks (e.g. concept generation). CSCD has been developed as a means of helping organizations produce higher quality and more diverse products in the light of several significant pressures. It should be noted, however, that no one system can support the diversity of design tasks which form the fundamental basis of creative design activity.