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Tech Report kmi-95-14 Abstract


Design Argumentation as Design Rationale
Techreport ID: kmi-95-14
Date: 1995
Author(s): Simon Buckingham Shum
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A design rationale (DR) is a representation of the reasoning behind the design of an artifact. In recent years, the use of semiformal notations for organising arguments about design decisions has attracted much interest within the software engineering and human-computer interaction communities, leading to the development of a number of DR notations and tool environments. This article begins by reviewing the motivation for expressing DR as design argumentation, and then surveys evidence from design studies to show when and how it can be productive to construct explicit design argumentation during design. The article then discusses practical cognitive, organizational and technological factors which could facilitate the uptake of design rationale systems.

Publication(s):

A revised version of this is to appear in: The Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, A. Kent and J. G. Williams, (Eds.). New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc. (1996)
 
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Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.