Richard Griffiths - Lecture Notes

    Design Rationale

    An excellent introduction to Design Rationale is the entry by Simon Buckingham Shum in “The Encyclopaedia of Computer Science and Technology”, available by FTP in Acrobat format [Buckingham Shum a].  The material presented during the lecture is explained more fully there, and you are recommended to read it.

      Advantages of design rational use

      These points are taken from [Dix et al.].
       
      • Communication mechanism among design team to communicate past critical decisions, what alternatives were investigated, and the reason for the chosen alternative.
      • Transfer of design knowledge between projects with similar rationales (i.e., in my view, patterns).
      • Encourages deliberation and explicit consideration of alternatives.

      Classification of design rationale systems

      These classifications are due to [Lee and Lai].
       
      • Process-oriented design rationale:  Historical records of design decisions, used during the actual design discussions.
      • Structure-oriented design rationale:  Concerned with the structure of the space of all design alternatives, which may be constructed by post hoc consideration of the design process.
      • Psychological design rationale:  Not covered here.

        • Process-oriented design rationale

        Most work in this area is based on Horst Rittel’s, 1970s Issue-Based Information System, IBIS, [Rittel & Webber] in which the design is documented as a hierarchical structure.

        The primitives of this system are;
         

          Issues: questions that the design or argument is addressing.
          Positions: potential resolutions of an issue.
          Arguments: that support or refute a position.

        The system starts from a root issue, and expands to generate sub-issues as it develops.

        The structure of an IBIS rational.
         
        An introduction to IBIS, can be seen at:  [Conklin].

          gIBIS
          Conklin and Yakemovic subsequently produced a graphical version called gIBIS.  Issues, positions and arguments are nodes in the directed graph, and the connections between them are labelled to depict the relationship between connected nodes.

          This is available as a commercial product:  QuestMap, from Conklin’s company, Group Decision Support Systems.  A description of it can be seen at: http://www.gdss.com/Questmap/aboutQM.htm

        Structure-oriented design rationale

        Also referred to as design space analysis, involves the post hoc (after the event) reconstruction of the space of design alternatives and options that were considered during the project.

        Examples of systems developed to facilitate this process include;  the Questions, Options and Criteria (QOC) notation, and Decision Representation Language (DRL).  A paper comparing these methods with IBIS,  can be seen at [Stumpf].

          Questions, Options and Criteria (QOC)
          This system, known as Design Space Analysis, developed by MacLean, Young, Bellotti and Moran, is described at: [Bellotti & MacLean].
          Decision Representation Language (DRL)
          An abstract of a paper introducing DRL by Jintae Lee, can be seen at:   [Lee].
          Also, DRL is described in the paper, [Buckingham Shum b].
     

    References

    Bellotti, V. & MacLean, A.  Design Space Analysis (DSA).  Viewd at: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/amodeus/summaries/DSAsummary.html

    Buckingham Shum, S.  1996.  Design Argumentation as Design Rationale.  In The Encyclopaedia of Computer Science and Technology, Marcel Dekker Inc: NY, Vol 35 Supp. 20, 95-128.  Viewed at:  ftp://kmi-ftp.open.ac.uk/pub/simonb/ecst96.pdf

    Buckingham Shum, S. 1996.  Negotiating the Construction of Organisational Memory Using Hypermedia Argument Spaces. Workshop on Knowledge Media for Improving Organisational Expertise, 1st International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management, Basel, Switzerland, 30-31 October 1996.  Viewed at: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/~simonb/org-knowledge/pakm96/negotiating/negotiating.html

    Conklin, J.  1998.  The IBIS Manual:  A Short Course in IBIS Methodology.  Viewed at:  http://www.gdss.com/IBIS.htm

    Dix, A., Finlay, J., Abowd, G. & Beale, R.  1998.  Human-Computer Interaction (Second Edition).  Prentice Hall Europe.

    Lee, J.  SIBYL:  A Tool for Managing Group Decision Rationale.  Viewed at:   http://tools.texas-one.org/EI/ICEIMT/archive/abstracts/sibyl.abstract

    Lee, J. & Lai, K.-Y. 1991.  What's in Design Rationale?  Human-Computer Interaction special issue on design rationale 6(3-4) pp. 251-280 .

    Rittel, H., and M. Webber, 1973 "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" pp 155-169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc. Amsterdam.

    Stumpf, S.  1998.  Argumentation-based Rationale - The Sharpest Tools in the Box.  http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/S.Stumpf/IN9801.html
     
     

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