Evaluating a multimedia history system as support for collaborative design

This paper describes an evaluation of the Raison d’Etre system by members of a design team that we recorded during a design project. Raison d’Etre is a hypermedia design history application developed to support design and design education [3]. It provides access to a database of video clips containing stories and personal perspectives of design team members recorded at various times through the course of a project. The system is intended to provide a simple framework for recording and organizing the informal history and rationale that design teams create and share in the course of their collaboration. The evaluation provided us with a rich set of observations about the value of using history information to reflect on design.