Modeling the evolving design rationale to achieve a shared understanding

How to achieve a shared understanding among design team members is essential for the collaborative design. Design rationale (DR) explains why and artifact is designed the way it is. An explicit representation of DR can bring many benefits to this objective. This paper argues that the conventional argumentation-based representation of DR has some inherent limitations. Based on this argument, an evolving design rationale (EDR) model is proposed to capture and formalize the DR and its evolving history, in which cognitive elements participating in a design process are organized in an integrated fashion. The model´s knowledge structure is detailed and its OWL-based knowledge representation is introduced. The two aspects in which EDR can contribute to the shared understanding are addressed. Finally, a graphical DR modeling system is developed. And the future research based on the proposed model is discussed.