Design reuse research : a computational perspective

This paper gives an overview of some computer based systems that focus on supporting engineering design reuse. Design reuse is considered here to reflect the utilisation of any knowledge gained from a design activity and not just past designs of artefacts. A design reuse process model, containing three main processes and six knowledge components, is used as a basis to identify the main areas of contribution from the systems. From this it can be concluded that while reuse libraries and design by reuse has received most attention, design for reuse, domain exploration and five of the other knowledge components lack research effort

The SEC-system : reuse support for scheduling system development

Recently, in a joint cooperation of Stichting VNA, SAL Apotheken, the Faculty of Management and Organization, and the University Centre for Pharmacy, University of Groningen in the Netherlands, a Ph.D-study started regarding Apot(he)ek, Organization and Management (APOM). The APOM-project deals with the structuring and steering of pharmacy organization. The manageability of the internal pharmacy organization, and the manageability of the direct environment of pharmacy organization is the subject matter. The theoretical background of the APOM-project is described. A literature study was made to find mixes of objectives. Three mixes of objectives in pharmacy organization are postulated; the product mix, the process mix, and the customer mix. The typology will be used as a basic starting point for the empirical study in the next phase of the APOM-project.

Minimum game plans : eco-design and low-tech fabrication in studios

This paper looks at eco-design and low-tech fabrication in studio

Designing as Construction of Representations: A Dynamic Viewpoint in Cognitive Design Research

This article presents a cognitively oriented viewpoint on design. It focuses on cognitive, dynamic aspects of real design, i.e., the actual cognitive activity implemented by designers during their work on professional design projects. Rather than conceiving de-signing as problem solving - Simon's symbolic information processing (SIP) approach - or as a reflective practice or some other form of situated activity - the situativity (SIT) approach - we consider that, from a cognitive viewpoint, designing is most appropriately characterised as a construction of representations. After a critical discussion of the SIP and SIT approaches to design, we present our view-point. This presentation concerns the evolving nature of representations regarding levels of abstraction and degrees of precision, the function of external representations, and specific qualities of representation in collective design. Designing is described at three levels: the organisation of the activity, its strategies, and its design-representation construction activities (different ways to generate, trans-form, and evaluate representations). Even if we adopt a "generic design" stance, we claim that design can take different forms depending on the nature of the artefact, and we propose some candidates for dimensions that allow a distinction to be made between these forms of design. We discuss the potential specificity of HCI design, and the lack of cognitive design research occupied with the quality of design. We close our discussion of representational structures and activities by an outline of some directions regarding their functional linkages

Improving the reuse possibilities of the behavioral aspects of object-oriented domain models.

Reuse of domain models is often limited to the reuse of the structural aspects of the domain (e.g. by means of generic data models). In object-oriented models, reuse of dynamic aspects is achieved by reusing the methods of domain classes. Because in the object-oriented approach any behavior is attached to a class, it is impossible to reuse behavior without at the same time reusing the class. In addition, because of the message passing paradigm, object interaction must be specified as a method attached to one class which is invoked by another class. In this way object interaction is hidden in the behavioral aspects of classes. This makes object interaction schemas difficult to reuse and customize. The focus of this paper is on improving the reuse of object-oriented domain models. This is achieved by centering the behavioral aspects around the concept of business events.Model; Models;

A frame signature matrix for analysing and comparing interaction design behaviour

Protocol studies are an established method to investigate design behaviour. In the context of a project to investigate novice interaction design (ID) behaviour across protocols and cultures, we found that existing design behaviour analysis frameworks did not provide reliable results. This paper describes the development of a new approach to analyse and compare ID behaviour using verbal protocols. We augment Schön’s basic design and reflection cycle with construction of a frame signature matrix and analogical categorisation coding. We demonstrate this approach by comparing two protocols of novice interaction designers in Botswana. The initial findings indicate that this approach increases consistency and accuracy of coding, and that there are different degrees of reframing for the design problem and solutions

Source Code Retrieval using Case Based Reasoning

Formal verification of source code has been extensively used in the past few years in order to create dependable software systems. However, although formal languages like Spec# or JML are getting more and more popular, the set of verified implementations is very small and only growing slowly. Our work aims to automate some of the steps involved in writing specifications and their implementations, by reusing existing verified programs. That is, for a given implementation we seek to retrieve similar verified code and then reapply the missing specification that accompanies that code. In this thesis, I present the retrieval system that is part of the Arís (Analogical Reasoning for reuse of Implementation & Specification) project. The overall methodology of the Arís project is very similar to Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and its parent discipline of Analogical Reasoning (AR), centered on the activities of solution retrieval and reuse. CBR’s retrieval phase is achieved using semantic and structural characteristics of source code. API calls are used as semantic anchors and characteristics of conceptual graphs are used to express the structure of implementations. Finally, we transfer the knowledge (i.e. formal specification) between the input implementation and the retrieved code artefacts to produce a specification for a given implementation. The evaluation results are promising and our experiments show that the proposed approach has real potential in generating formal specifications using past solutions

Retrieval, reuse, revision and retention in case-based reasoning

El original está disponible en www.journals.cambridge.orgCase-based reasoning (CBR) is an approach to problem solving that emphasizes the role of prior experience during future problem solving (i.e., new problems are solved by reusing and if necessary adapting the solutions to similar problems that were solved in the past). It has enjoyed considerable success in a wide variety of problem solving tasks and domains. Following a brief overview of the traditional problem-solving cycle in CBR, we examine the cognitive science foundations of CBR and its relationship to analogical reasoning. We then review a representative selection of CBR research in the past few decades on aspects of retrieval, reuse, revision, and retention.Peer reviewe

Collaborative design : managing task interdependencies and multiple perspectives

This paper focuses on two characteristics of collaborative design with respect to cooperative work: the importance of work interdependencies linked to the nature of design problems; and the fundamental function of design cooperative work arrangement which is the confrontation and combination of perspectives. These two intrinsic characteristics of the design work stress specific cooperative processes: coordination processes in order to manage task interdependencies, establishment of common ground and negotiation mechanisms in order to manage the integration of multiple perspectives in design