Representing Design Intent for Computer-supported Consistency Maintenance

In order to overcome the potential problems during design modification and reuse, it is necessary to record the design intent as an explicit part of the design thinking process and execute consistency maintenance of the design thinking process. This paper presents a design thinking process model that records not only the design activities and decisions but also the design intents behind them. Based on this model, two types of inconsistency in design thinking process are identified. The implementation of consistency check and maintenance is based on assumption-based truth maintenance system (ATMS).