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.

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.

Complex design problems require more knowledge than any one single person can possess, and the knowledge relevant to a problem is often distributed and controversial. Rather than being a limiting factor, symmetry of ignorance can provide the foundation for social creativity. Bringing different points of view together and trying to create a shared understanding among all stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. Social creativity can be supported by new media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and solving these problems. These new media need to be designed from a meta-design perspective by creating environments in which stakeholders can act as designers and be more than consumers. Keywords conceptual frameworks for creativity and cognition, consumers, designers, impact of new media on design, meta-design, social creativity, symmetry of ignorance Gerhard Fischer 2 KBS Special Issues C&C99 INTRODUCTION______________________________________...

Lifelong learning is an essential challenge for inventing the future of our societies; it is a necessity rather than a possibility or a luxury to be considered. Lifelong learning is more than adult education or training --- it is a mindset and a habit for people to acquire. It creates the challenge to understand, explore, and support new essential dimensions of learning such as: (1) selfdirected learning, (2) learning on demand, (3) informal learning, and (4) collaborative and organizational learning. Lifelong learning requires a deeper understanding of the co-evolutionary processes between fundamental human activities and their relationships and interdependencies with new media. It requires progress and an integration of new theories, innovative systems, practices, and assessment. To make lifelong learning an important part of human life, new intellectual spaces, physical spaces, organizational forms, and reward structures need to be created that allow individuals, groups, and organiz...

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 paper identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative humancomputer 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. Although the EDC framework is applicable to

Abstract. Our research explores meta-design as an innovative framework in the design of an emerging type of software-intensive systems called participative software systems. The fundamental challenge facing this approach is achieving the best fit between the software system and its ever-changing context of use, problems, domains, users, and communities of users. Our objective is to define the scientific foundation for designing participative software systems: socio-technical environments that are capable of coping with emergent needs in the context of personally meaningful activities and that empower users, as owners of problems, to engage actively and collaboratively in continual development.