This poster presents the development of DesignNet, a knowledge-based project to the online digital display, retrieval and archiving of rich media resources for industrial design education and research. The project addresses the needs of end-users (teachers and students) and content providers interacting with the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano

Boghetich, M.

Ciuccarelli, P.

Innocenti, P.

Vidari, F.

Enlighten: Publications

An online knowledge gateway for industrial design education and research activities

Enlighten

This paper presents DesignNet, a knowledge-based system to the online digital display, retrieval and archiving of rich media resources for industrial design education and
research. It addresses the needs of end-users (teachers, researchers and students) and content providers interacting with the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano. The project moves from the assumption that traditional modalities of archiving and presentation currently adopted by the Politecnico and other academic institutions are not coherent
with industrial design process and its need of project-support materials. The typical outputs
of industrial design process are 3D models or 2D graphics, not just texts or simple
images, the materials for which the usual method and technique of archiving and retrieval
are conceived and developed. The challenges, philosophy and methodology in creating
this evolving Web-based, cataloguing, multimedia knowledge-base to VR design resources
are discussed. Finally, the related system and prototype are described

BOGHETICH, GIANGIUSEPPE MIDA

CIUCCARELLI, PAOLO

INNOCENTI, PERLA

VIDARI, FEDERICO

Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Politecnico di Milano

DesignNet: a online knowledge gateway for industrial design education and research activities

An Online Knowledge Gateway for Industrial Design Education and Research Activities

Innocenti, Perla

Mida Bogetich

Paolo Ciuccarelli

Federico Vidari

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

Proc. Int. Conf. on Dublin Core and Metadata for e-Communities 2002: 197-198© Firenze University Press1. Introduction & issuesThis poster presents the development of DesignNet,a knowledge-based project to the online digital dis-play, retrieval and archiving of rich media resourcesfor industrial design education and research. Theproject addresses the needs of end-users (teachersand students) and content providers interacting withthe School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano. Itmoves from the assumption that conventional modal-ities of archiving and presentation currently adoptedby the Politecnico and other academic institutionsare not coherent with design teaching. Typical out-puts of industrial design process are in fact 3D mod-els or 2D graphics (digital and/or physical), not justtexts or simple images. The challenges, philosophyand methodology in creating this evolving Web-based, cataloguing, multimedia knowledge-base ofVirtual Reality and textual design resources are dis-cussed, along with description of the related systemand prototype.Traditional cataloguing standards or automatedsearch engines are not efficient with files such 3Dmodels and 2D graphics. Their performancesdegrade with multimedia data, as they have not beencreated to be catalogued and their textual informa-tion are implicitly contained but not explicitlydeclared. Design knowledge is mainly iconically man-ifested and manipulable, thus most of presentresources resulted “invisible” and did not have adefined and organized location through time. Easyusability, transfer and visualization of such data wereidentified as main goals of the project. Furthermore,as such resources are in large quantities and in con-stant evolution, we needed an open, integrated andcollaborative structure, with multiple levels ofdescription and the possibility of regular checkingand updates.2. The systemDesignNet gateway features a searchable, brows-able database of high quality resource collections andservices, recognized cataloguing and indexing stan-dards and specific interface modalities. The applica-tion profile schema used in the project is based onDublin Core Qualified, chosen because of its flexibili-ty and simplicity. Selection and definition of Dublin Core schema forthe project has been experimentally led testing differ-ent schemas with content providers (departmentaland interdepartmental laboratories and archives andthe Permanent Design Collection of the TriennaleFoundation of Milan).The recently released OAI Version 2.0 of Protocolfor Metadata Harvesting is being investigated forinteroperability issues, although we are aware thatthis will result in a loss of the detailed qualificationthat has been done within the project.In order to provide a unified integrated access, ain-house Italian Thesaurus for Industrial Design hasbeen manually developed using terms and classesfrom specific domains. This term-based approachwas preferred as it improves the precision fordescriptions and subject access to resources,enabling more updating, exhaustiveness, specificityand flexibility than classification and subject head-ings. We referred to ANSI/ISO standard, DeweyDecimal Classification, manuals and pre-existing the-sauri. The School of Design community was alsoactively involved for term selection and class organi-zation, according to the main issues occurring in thecreation of a design project.Parallel to the thesaurus is the elaboration ofauthority files of companies, institutions and relevantpeople of the design world, periodically updated. Weare also planning the use of Visual RetrievalTechniques for the automatic description of shape,scale and colour distribution of large set of 3D files,as a complementary tool to browse the repository.A crucial problem of heterogeneous resource col-lections in Web-based applications, often preservedin different repositories which have adopted differentstandards and formats, is their management andvisualization with a homogeneous interface. In theDesignNet system, metadata are associated toresources inside a RDBMS with a Web interfaceAn Online Knowledge Gateway for Industrial Design Education and Research ActivitiesMida Boghetich, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Perla Innocenti, Federico VidariDept. INDACO, Politecnico di Milano, Italypaolo.ciuccarelli@polimi.it198 DC-2002, October, 13-17 - Florence, Italyappositely created. This allows effective informationretrieval and manipulation through exploitation ofJava and XML, access to metadata but also to thevery same resources. Visualization is supported byprevious selection of current available standards(PDF, JPEG, VRLM, MP3, Real, QuickTime), turningraw files into deliverable products to assure theirportability on different platforms. 3. The prototype’s implementation Within those general workflow and conditions afirst prototype has been implemented. The heart ofmultilayered structure DesignNet MetadataManagement System is DesignNet framework, basedon a J2EE platform and on a Dublin Core MetadataSchema structure. The framework is a set of toolswhich enables to create, catalogue and search itemsrecorded within the database. Content is collected,selected and processed with metadata creation andvalidation. The Industrial Design Thesaurus is bothan information storage and retrieval tool. It’s used byindexers as a listing of words and phrases authorizedfor use, showing with relationships, variants and syn-onyms. For searchers it’s a aid to navigation andretrieval, sitting behind the search interface.An input tool with HTML form allows contentproviders and project team members to: create newrecords, search and browse existing ones, verify andgive them authority, update them when needed. ARDMBS repository stores the records and a applica-tion provides a searchable and browsable interfaceusing a Apache 1.3.9 Web server. The database cansupport queries based on terms from the IndustrialDesign Thesaurus, authority files, Dublin CoreElements and Qualifiers. As the framework has beenbuilt to be flexible, at any time tables can be added ordeleted without having to change the entire schemaof the database. In order to represent semantic values while search-ing documents, dynamically build schemas provideto help users in the retrieval and to evoke the contextof the searched resources, in terms of quantity andtypology. The system shows users their search path,stirring up a major consciousness of the researchingcontext and methodology. Moreover, there are somefeatures to trace our activity: tags can be used toinsert an object into advanced bookmarks listed bycategory or related to a real project. Users can seethis tag and ask the system such information. The system features a single point of entry for theuser to cross-database digital resources; knowledge-based retrieval with dynamic visualization; advancedsearch and browse functionalities. Also available are:documentation for DesignNet Team members andusers (with glossary, resource selection criteria, meta-data manual, progress report, publications); onlinewhite-boards for message exchange and e-bulletinsfor user feedbacks; maps of people competences; sec-tions with on-going projects and latest resourcesadded; conference and events notice board to pro-mote Italian design knowledge; electronic forum forlinking students, researcher and professionals fortraining, long term partnerships, research activities;possibility of sharing files with others on the Internetthrough upload and download.Documentation and references of the project areavailable at www.designet.polimi.it.

https://re.public.polimi.it/retrieve/handle/11311/245478/773/2002%20VSMM.pdf

An online knowledge gateway for industrial design education and research activities

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Enlighten: Publications

Enlighten

Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Politecnico di Milano

Archivio istituzionale della ricerca - Politecnico di Milano

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository