ONTOLOGY-BASED DESIGN COLLABORATION



SIAL Team:
    Jane Burry
    Andrew Burrow
    Robert Amor





This project develops and evaluates tools for collaboration in design teams. Such tools are successful when they foster interactions that animate a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Furthermore, such tools are characterised by the context in which they operate. In particular, our tools focus on the role of taxonomies that dynamically arise within design communication.



We are interested in large and innovative design projects. Large projects require participants from a range of disciplines. Hence, our tools consider the negotiation and development of project specific terms that bridge disciplinary boundaries. Innovation in the design process requires contingency, which precludes the prior specification of interactions. Hence, our tools enable the development of communication channels. In both cases, the tools enable in situ construction that arises dynamically in the context of design communication.


Wiki Hypertext Systems

Our first tool brings new structure to wiki hypertext systems. Lattice structured wiki generalises the flat namespace and implicit page creation of wiki hypertext systems into a lattice structured system where the partial order is viewability.



This system generalises publishing by the upward movement of pages in a dynamically constructed lattice. It is able to infer the publishing state of all pages from lightweight inferences involving the hypertext and a process with similar overhead to addressing email. The result is a dynamic taxonomy of collaboration channels, which also structures terms according to their presence in collaboration channels.