A design rationale (DR) is a representation of the reasoning behind the design of an artifact. In recent years, the use of semiformal notations for structuring arguments about design decisions has attracted much interest within the human-computer interaction and software engineering communities, leading to a number of DR notations and support environments. This paper examines two foundational claims made by argumentation-based DR approaches: that expressing DR as argumentation is useful, and that designers can use such notations. The conceptual and empirical basis for these claims is examined, firstly by surveying relevant literature on the use of argumentation in non-design contexts (from which current DR efforts draw much inspiration), and secondly, by surveying DR work. Evidence is classified according to the research contribution it makes, the kind of data on which claims are based (anecdotal or experimental), the extent to which the claims made are substantiated, and whether or not the users of the approach were also the researchers. In the survey, a trend towards tightly integrating DR with other design representations is noted, but it is argued that taken too far, this may result in the loss of the original vision of argumentative

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.

Human understanding in design evolves through a process of critiquing existing knowledge and consequently expanding the store of design knowledge. Critiquing is a dialog 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 humancomputer 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 designer's 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...

The development of schemes to support group work, whether behavioral methods or new technologies like groupware, should be based on detailed knowledge about how groups work, what they do well, and what they have trouble with. Such data can be used to suggest what kinds of tools people might need as well as to provide a baseline for evaluating the effects of schemes for improvement. We present details of how real groups engage in a representative collaborative task- early software design meetings- to provide such knowledge. We studied 10 design meetings from four projects in two organizations. The meetings were videotaped, transcribed, and then analyzed using a coding scheme that looked at participants ' problem solving and the activities they used to coordinate and manage themselves. We also analyzed the structure of their design arguments. We found, to our surprise, that although the meetings differed in how many issues were covered they were strikingly similar in both how people spent their time and in the sequential

Semiformal, argumentation-based notations are one of the main classes of formalism currently being used to represent design rationale (DR). However, our understanding of the demands on designers of using such representations has to date been drawn largely from informal and anecdotal evidence. One way to tackle the fundamental challenge of reducing DR's representational overheads, is to understand the relationship between designing, and the idea structuring tasks introduced by a semiformal DR notation. Empirically based analyses of DR in use can therefore inform the design of the notations in order to turn the structuring effort to the designers' advantage. This is the approach taken in this chapter, which examines how designers use a DR notation during design problem solving. Two empirical studies of DR-use are reported, in which designers used the QOC notation (MacLean et al., this volume) to express rationale for their designs. In the first study, a substantial and consistent body o...

Hypertext research in the mid-1980s on representing argumentation for design rationale (DR) foreshadowed what are now dominant concerns in knowledge management: representing, codifying and manipulating semiformal concepts, the use of formalisms to mediate collective sensemaking, and the construction of group memory. With the benefit of 15 years ’ hindsight, we can see the failure of so many hypertext DR systems to be adopted as symptomatic of the more general problem of fostering ‘hypertext literacy’ in real working environments. Pursuing Englebart’s goal of “augmenting human intellect”, we describe the Compendium approach to collective sensemaking, which demonstrates the impact that a hypertext facilitator can have on the learning and adoption problems that plagued earlier hypertext systems. We also describe how conventional documents and modelling notations can be morphed into and out of Compendium’s ‘native hypertext’ in order to support other modes of working across diverse communities of practice.

this paper, I review the history of HCI as steps toward a science of design. My touchstone is Simon's (1969) provocative book he Sciences of the Artificial. The book pre-dates HCI, and many of its specific characterizations and claims about design are no longer authoritative (see Ehn, 1988). Nevertheless, two of Simon's themes echo through the history of HCI, and still provide guidance for charting its continuing development

Claims for the virtues of visual programming languages have generally been strong, simple-minded statements that visual programs are inherently better than textual ones. They have paid scant attention to previous empirical literature showing difficulties in comprehending visual programs. This paper reports comparisons between the comprehensibility of textual and visual programs, drawing on the methods developed by Green (1977) for comparing detailed comprehensibility of conditional structures. The visual language studied was LabView, a circuit-diagram-like language which can express conditionals either as `forwards' structures (condition implies action, with nesting) or as `backwards' structures (action is governed by conditions, with boolean operators in place of nesting). Green (1977) found that forwards structures gave relatively better access to `sequential' information, and Gilmore and Green (1984) showed `backwards' structures gave relatively better access to `circumstantial' inf...

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...

Preface...................................................................................................................5 1.