Case libraries in support of design education: the DesignMuse experiences

A major part of the reasoning designers do involves accessing old cases and using the lessons learned in those situations to address new problems. DesignMuse is a shell for creating online case libraries with built in browsing capabilities that make cases available to design students in a natural way while they are designing. Archie-2 is the most extensive case library built with DesignMuse, and has been used in Georgia Tech´s design studios. Archie-2 provides flexible access to multimedia case representations of buildings: libraries, courthouses and skyscrapers. Susie is a student built library containing cases about sustainable technology and development. These two case libraries illustrate the two ways in which we believe case libraries can enhance learning in the classroom: (1) by using the case library to search for analyze, compare and contrast cases that are similar to the problems students are solving, which will improve their problem solving skills; and (2) by constructing cases and building a library after doing research in a domain, which will help them learn domain knowledge. The paper describes classroom experiences with these two DesignMuse based case libraries and work in progress on enhancing various functionalities of these libraries based on feedback from students and informal classroom observations