Digital information support for concept design

Abstract

This paper outlines the issues in effective utilisation of digital resources in conceptual design. Access to appropriate information acts as stimuli and can lead to better substantiated concepts. This paper addresses the issues of presenting such information in a digital form for effective use, exploring digital libraries and groupware as relevant literature areas, and argues that improved integration of these two technologies is necessary to better support the concept generation task. The development of the LauLima learning environment and digital library is consequently outlined. Despite its attempts to integrate the designers' working space and digital resources, continuing issues in library utilisation and migration of information to design concepts are highlighted through a class study. In light of this, new models of interaction to increase information use are explored

Augmenting the 6-3-5 method with design information

“…The concept design methods most similar to the ICR Grid are progressive ones such as 6-3-5 (Rohrbach 1969), the Gallery Method (Hellfritz 1978) and C-Sketch (Kulkarni et al 2001), which provide a similar framework for teams to undertake open-ended design work. The ICR Grid, however, differs in the systematic utilization of information both internal and external to the team (Wodehouse and Ion 2010a). This means it incorporates search activities that other methods would not normally encompass, and furthermore the output is a combination of information and conceptual work, linked and categorized according to the design context.…”