Knowledge medium for the global design

Summary form only given. This paper describes a new design style called "Global Design" that is based on collaboration between designers beyond the physical restrictions of time and space, and proposes the "knowledge medium" which supports global design. The knowledge medium is a computer medium for designers to share dynamically the wide range of design information containing the history and the intent as well as product information such as drawings. The knowledge medium is a new kind of design-support environment in which designers can interact with each other through a shared design process. It is important for the knowledge medium to perform simultaneous capture, accumulation and transfer of the design information through one medium. It is also important for the knowledge medium to mitigate the designer\´s overhead of inputting information by active capturing support of the design information. This paper proposes the “POET knowledge medium” which implements the knowledge medium in a system based on the “activity chain model”. The activity chain model introduces the chained structure into the activities in order to improve the explanation capability based on the design intent, and employs easy and efficient capturing of the design intent in the action-based method. The POET knowledge medium enables the designers to use the same integrated model in order to capture, accumulate, and transfer the dynamic design information including histories and intent simultaneously