Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities.

The fundamental challenge for human-computer interaction (HCI) is to invent and design a culture in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Cultures are substantially defined by their media and tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. New media change (1) the structure and contents of our interests, (2) the nature of our cognitive and physical tools, and (3) the social environment in which thoughts originate and evolve, and mindsets develop. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of seeing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and to act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of high-tech scribes, but rather to all interested individuals and groups. 1. Introduction Cultures are substantially defined by their media and their tools for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating. A large...

Domain-oriented design environments are cooperative problem-solving systems that support designers in complex design tasks. In this paper we present the facilities and architecture of Argo, a domain-oriented design environment for software architecture. Argo’s architecture is motivated by the desire to achieve reuse and extensibility of the design environment. It separates domain-neutral code from domain-oriented code, which is distributed among intelligent design materials as opposed to being centralized in the design environment. Argo’s facilities are motivated by the observed cognitive needs of designers. These facilities extend previous work in design environments to support reflection-in-action, opportunistic design, and comprehension and problem-solving. Keywords: Domain-oriented design environments, critics, software architectures, architectural styles, humancomputer interaction, human cognitive skills.

This paper introduces the special issue of Knowledge-Based Systems on HumanComputer Collaboration (HCC). It derives a set of fundamental issues from a definition of collaboration, introduces two major approaches to HCC, and surveys each approach, showing how it formulates and addresses the issues. It concludes by proposing some themes that should characterize a unified approach to human-computer collaboration. 1 Introduction Collaboration is a process in which two or more agents work together to achieve shared goals. Thirty researchers came together in Raleigh, North Carolina in October of 1993 for a AAAI Fall Symposium dedicated to this topic. The goal of the symposium was to achieve a better understanding of Human-Computer Collaboration (HCC), collaboration involving at least one human and one computational agent. In particular, the symposium sought to explore the fundamental nature of collaborative problem solving, understand the constraints brought to bear by the differing charac...

Complex design problems often cannot be solved by individuals or by homogenous groups. Communities of interest (CoIs) (defined by their collective concern with the resolution of a problem) bring together stakeholders from different communities of practice (CoP). Reaching a common understanding between these stakeholders is a major challenge due to the "symmetry of ignorance" caused by their respective cultures and their use of different knowledge systems. Our research has focused on the development of conceptual frameworks and innovative socio-technical environments to exploit the "symmetry of ignorance" as a source for social creativity among CoIs. Gerhard Fischer 2 IRIS'24, Norway 1

We live in a world characterized by evolution -- that is, by ongoing processes of development, formation, and growth in both natural and human-created systems. Biology tells us that complex, natural systems are not created all at once but must instead evolve over time. We are becoming increasingly aware that evolutionary processes are ubiquitous and critical for technological innovations as well. This is particularly true for complex software systems because these systems do not necessarily exist in a technological context alone but instead are embedded within dynamic human organizations. The Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L 3 D) at the University of Colorado has been involved in research on software design and other design domains for more than a decade. We understand software design as an evolutionary process in which system requirements and functionality are determined through an iterative process of collaboration among multiple stakeholders, rather than being completel...

One fundamental challenge for the design of the interactive systems of the future is to invent and design environments and cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of viewing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of “high-tech scribes, ” but rather to all interested individuals and groups. Meta-design characterizes activities, processes, and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative. In this paper we discuss problems addressed by our research on meta-design, provide a conceptual framework for metadesign, and illustrate our developments in the context of a particular system, the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory.

This article explores the design perspective's

Modern software development is a knowledge-intensive activity. The proliferation of development tools, rapidly changing technology, and increasing complexity and diversity of application domains all increase the cognitive burden placed on software developers. General purpose programming languages and CASE tools offer little relief from these problems. Knowledge management tools are needed that can effectively capture and disseminate software development knowledge that applies to the domain-specific needs of an organization. This knowledge is not static, but evolves with technology and the changing needs of the organization's development practices, customer base, and business milieu.

Abstract. This paper describes AMPHION 1, a knowledge-based software engineering (KBSE) system that guides a user in developing a formal specification of a problem and then implements this specification as a program consisting of calls to subroutines from a library. AMPHION is domain independent and is specialized to an application domain through a declarative domain theory. A user is guided in creating a diagram that represents the formal specification through menus based upon the domain theory and the current state of the specification. The diagram also serves to document the specification. Program synthesis is based upon constructive theorem proving, and is efficient and totally automatic. 1