An information system based on empirical studies of engineering designers

Engineering design is a cross-disciplinary activity in which people with different areas of expertise often collaborate. Rapid advances in technology, decreasing product life-cycles, and globalization of enterprises with the attendant need for information concerning legal, regulatory, and environmental concerns necessitate the exploration of many different information sources concurrently. We have developed an architecture for an information system to assist designers, based on an empirical (`ethnographic´) field study of designers´ work, system requirements, and information needs. In our study, corroborated by similar work by others, we often find problems due to the different perspectives, mind sets, and domains of knowledge and expertise that are typical among design team members. Highlights of the field study are discussed in this paper, together with an outline of the computational architecture. An information system being implemented is also described