engleski

An explorer style interface for design knowledge indexing based on taxonomies

The designers often find existing knowledge management systems being too complicated and/or too obtrusive to be used in their everyday practice. This paper explores the proposition that a simple and intuitive interface combined with simple and easy to use methods of indexing and searching design knowledge might overcome those problems. A prototype software tool in a form of "explorer style interface" for knowledge indexing has been developed, together with the proposal of relational database structure for storing and searching of indexed knowledge. Knowledge indexing method is based on taxonomies – both generic and specific. Elements (nodes) of taxonomies are visualized as folders and file structures – this approach enables very simple method for their creation and maintenance and also enables very simple and natural access to design documents and their fragments. We have also investigated how some predefined elements for generating parts of design rationale explanations could be introduced in order to speed up the knowledge capture and indexing processes.

design knowledge indexing; taxonomies; interface; knowledge management

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