Consistency Maintenance in Design Decision Support System

In most design activities, the design decision-making process is not recorded explicitly, which has severe impacts on design modification and design reuse. This paper presents a design thinking process model that records not only the design procedure and decisions but also the design intents behind them. The design thinking process is evolved based on the interaction among design intents, solutions and operations. Three types of inconsistency situation are analyzed and the design decision support prototype system is presented for capturing and managing the design thinking process.