INTERTWINING KNOWLEDGE DELIVERY AND ELICITATION - A PROCESS MODEL FORHUMAN-COMPUTER COLLABORATION IN DESIGN

Collaboration among designers can be described with an 'action-reflect ion-critique' model in which the explicit representation of the design contributes to a shared understanding and to the articulation of desi gn knowledge. The paper describes how domain-oriented design environme nts based on this model support human-computer collaboration by inter- twining knowledge delivery and elicitation. The KID (Knowing-In-Design ) system has a shared understanding about the designers' 'task at hand ' through a partial design requirement specification and a solution. K ID delivers design knowledge relevant to this task at hand, and the de livery helps designers uncover tacit design concerns. Designers are en couraged to store the elicited design knowledge in KID, which results in the evolution of the system's knowledge bases. The evolution affect s the system's subsequent behavior by tuning the delivery toward the d esigners. This cycle of knowledge delivery and elicitation processes s upported by KID allows designers to gradually coevolve design requirem ents and solutions.