RECALL in Action

Abstract

Concept generation and development occur most frequently in informal media where design capture tools are the weakest. This statement has strong implications for the capture and reuse of design knowledge because conceptual design generates the majority of initial ideas and directions that guide the course of the project. The paper presents RECALL*, a learning and collaboration technology that facilitates transparent and cost effective capture, sharing, and re-use of knowledge in informal media, such as, sketching, audio, and video. We describe test scenarios of use in a mobile computing testbed environment augmented by RECALL. The tests were performed during a larger scale validation and deployment experiment in the context of the collaborative, geographically distributed Architecture/Engineering/Construction course (CEE222/122) offered at Stanford. Introduction While traditional product documentation captures explicit knowledge such as requirements, specifications, and design decisions, often the contextual or tacit knowledge of the design group is lost. Concept generation and development occur most frequently in informal media where design capture tools are the weakest. This statement has strong implications for the capture and reuse of design knowledge because conceptual design generates the majority of initial ideas and directions that guide the course of the project. Sketching is a natural mode for designers, instructors, or students to communicate in highly informal activities such as brainstorming sessions, project reviews, lectures, or Q&A sessions. Often, the sketch itself is merely the vehicle that spawns discussion about a particular design issue. Thus, from a design capture perspective, capture of both the sketch itself and the discussion that provides the context behind the sketch are important. It is interesting to note that today's state-of-practice or best practices are not captured and 1 Director of Project Based Learning Laboratory and St. Res. Assoc., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, fruchter@ee.stanford.edu 2 Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Design Research, Stanford University, kreiner@cdr.stanford.edu * RECALL technology invention has currently a provisional patent. The patent application is currently being processed