Capturing Design Rationale in Engineering Contexts
Lukas Ruecker, Warren P. Seering · 1996
Abstract In our research we have focused on capturing design rationale — that is, the reasons that underlie design decisions — during the early stages of the product development process. Capturing rationale is important because it allows others to understand decisions, make changes, and review a conclusion in the light of new information. In this paper we describe a well-grounded computer-supportable approach to capturing rationale in an engineering setting. At the heart of this approach is a computationally efficient and dynamically extensible representation of the context in which design decisions are made. We also describe a program that uses this representation to automatically chunk, classify, and integrate explanations offered by engineers when justifying design decisions.