Design rationale: the rationale and the barriers

One goal of design rationale systems is to support designers by providing a means to record and communicate the argumentation and reasoning behind the design process. However, there are several inherent limitations to developing systems that effectively capture and utilize design rationale. The dynamic and contextual nature of design and our inability to exhaustively analyze all possible design issues results in cognitive, capture, retrieval, and usage limitations. In addition, there are the organizational limitations that ensue when systems are deployed. In this paper we analyze these issues in terms of current perspectives in design theory and describe the implications to design research. We discuss the barriers to effective design rationale in terms of three major goals: reflection, communication, and analysis of design processes. We then suggest alternate means to achieve these goals that can be used with or instead of design rationale systems.

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