Knowledge Reuse for Customization: Metamodels in an Open Design Community for 3d Printing

Theories of knowledge reuse posit two distinct processes: reuse for replication and reuse for innovation. We identify another distinct process, reuse for customization. Reuse for customization is a process in which designers manipulate the parameters of metamodels to produce models that fulfill their personal needs. We test hypotheses about reuse for customization in Thingiverse, a community of designers that shares files for three-dimensional printing. 3D metamodels are reused more often than the 3D models they generate. The reuse of metamodels is amplified when the metamodels are created by designers with greater community experience. Metamodels make the community's design knowledge available for reuse for customization-or further extension of the metamodels, a kind of reuse for innovation

A Pattern Approach to Understand Group Collaboration in Hands-on and Remote Laboratories

We identify patterns of group collaboration within hands-on and remote laboratories. The pattern of group collaboration includes three elements: the collaboration mode, the communication medium and the collaboration structure. In addition, we examine how patterns of group collaboration evolved during different phases of the labs. Based upon our observation of 22 engineering students, we found two common patterns of the collaboration mode in both hands-on labs and remote labs: in one case, students seem to minimize cognitive effort, and in the other, they continue to do what they have been doing before. We also described the different types of communication media and collaboration structure in the two labs. Face-to-face meetings were found to be the dominant method of group communication in both labs, but students adopted a wider variety of communication methods when working with remote labs, and they interacted more with each other when they ran remote labs

What Diagrams Say About Technology

By examining the diagrams of technology users, we can gain insight into their perceptions. In this study, we collected diagrams from 41 participants. We found that these participants make use of both shape and position to differentiate themselves from the technology they use. Shape and position also differentiate hardware devices from software applications. Most users also draw direct connections between themselves and their applications, bypassing in their diagrams the devices that mediate this communication. Thus, devices may recede from awareness as we focus on applications and the information they make available

Portraying Design Essence

Recent discourse in the Design Science Research community addresses the necessity to accumulate and reuse design knowledge. However, design methods are complex and so are the traditional ways to document design knowledge. Inspired by the high business and academic impact of Business Model Canvas, we argue that a single-page portrayal of nine design elements can help designers to capture design knowledge and eventually share it with other designers. This paper reports on our attempt to create, demonstrate, and evaluate an instance of such tools, one that we call the Portrait of Design Essence

Clarity from Confusion: Using Intended Interactions to Design Information Systems

Two tools are described that help designers visualize the structure of a system in the requirements phase of a project. First, a matrix is constructed that represents the tendency of components to interact. The matrix is derived from sequence diagrams, which in turn are based on textual scenarios. This interaction matrix is transformed into a structure plot of the system, showing a graph of the essential connections between actors. Second, this same matrix is used to generate a sequence plot: a sequence diagram optimized for problem-solving. We illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, first with a simulation study, and later with a participant-based study of inference from diagrams. The results suggest that a similarity-based approach to information systems design can generate new testable tools. Pragmatically, the tools help novices and experts alike by automatically generating candidate system configurations in the form of structural diagrams, and by generating better sequence diagrams

Evaluating Design Solutions Using Crowds

Crowds can be used to generate and evaluate design solutions. To increase a crowdsourcing system’s effectiveness, we propose and compare two evaluation methods, one using five-point Likert scale rating and the other prediction voting. Our results indicate that although the two evaluation methods correlate, they have different goals: whereas prediction voting focuses evaluators on identifying the very best solutions, the rating focuses evaluators on the entire range of solutions. Thus, prediction voting is appropriate when there are many poor quality solutions that need to be filtered out, and rating is suited when all ideas are reasonable and distinctions need to be made across all solutions. The crowd prefers participating in prediction voting. The results have pragmatic implications, suggesting that evaluation methods should be assigned in relation to the distribution of quality present at each stage of crowdsourcing