|
Dipti Mandalia
Payal Prabhu
Statement
Currently the EDC system does not incorporate active critiquing. It only critiques passively in the reflection space. It does not allow for backtalk from artifacts in the action space during the design phase. Intuitively, we believe, deploying some level of active critiquing within the design phase would be advantageous to stakeholders.
We will survey existing critiquing systems like those in the Janus family, TraumaTIQ, AIDA, and ICADS among others to understand what levels of critiquing benefit the stakeholders maximally. We have research papers about most of these systems, and also websites (with system designers) that we will exploit to get our information. Surveying these systems will entail:
- Determining the purpose and implementation of the system; what domain it was created for, and if its domain reflects conditions similar to those of the EDC
- Understanding the level of critiquing implemented in each system
- How helpful critiquing is in each system and how it can be enhanced to further benefit the design process
In applying these critiquing criteria to the EDC system, we will prioritize the breakdown criteria applicable to the current action space. In doing so, we need to understand the severity of design conflicts to the current action space (for example, allowing preferred walking distance to be violated in the initial stages of route construction). For strict constraints, the system might need to have aggressive critiquing while for loose constraints the system could be allowed to proceed with passive critiquing at the end of the current session.
As an aside, we will evaluate the difficulty of implementing such critiquing in the EDC system and evaluate its inherent benefits. We believe, our report will emphasize those criteria that need to be attended to immediately versus others that can be dealt with at a later stage.
Rationale
Dipti is currently involved in critiquing related work on the EDC with Hal and Eric. She is mainly dealing with the actual implementation of critiquing and wants to find out how exactly her implementation of critiquing within the EDC will improve it and how feasible this implementation can be.
Payal’s interest was sparked was during the in-lab session where the class role-played on the PitaBoard. There were very apparent breakdowns in the route design (like drawing roads through schools) that were not controlled by the system. This is when she realized she wanted to investigate how the system could prompt the user to make informed decision based on theoretical criteria, and how beneficial such prompting would be.
The structure of the reflection space implemented as an extensible website provides an avenue for neighbors to explore and reflect upon ramifications of the design choices made in the action space. Having investigated the theory supporting critiquing, we understand that only in breakdown situations do stakeholders investigate other mitigating factors in the design process. Another HCI principle we understood was that there was a lot of knowledge available to the stakeholders, but adequate attention was not paid to them. “Knowledge is abundant but attention is the scarce resource.” Critiquing is a mechanism that employs many of the principles of HCI and in exploring this mechanism we will be familiar with the practical applications of these principles. Dipti and I believe this project will be a practical understanding of these principles, including those established by the L3D lab. This is why we think it will be a beneficial group project for not only the both of us but also the whole class.
Non-Implementation Project
Our null hypotheses are:
- Critiquing that is directly provided from the action space while the language with the artifacts is being formulated is intuitively easy to implement. For example, the action space not allowing the stakeholder to draw a bus route through a house would mean changing some criteria within the EDC system to halt such breakdowns.
- Critiquing in situations where the ramifications of the design are ill formed in nature and coming to a consensus within the group is difficult, are inherently difficult to implement. For example, whether the system suggests a bus stop near a shopping mall would require some discussion and would not always be acceptable by all stakeholders.
Since we are putting the principles of critiquing in the context of the EDC where critiquing is implemented only passively, there is no current active EDC critic we can investigate. However, papers have been written in the area of active critiquing in the EDC (by the members of the L3D group) but none of these have been implemented.
References
- Antibody Identification Assistant (AIDA), An Example of a Cooperative Computer Support System (Guerlain, S. et.al.)
- Crack: A Critiquing Approach to Cooperative Kitchen Design (Fischer. G., Morch, A.I.)
- Design Critiquing Systems (Robbins, J.E.)
- Embedding Critics in Design Environments (Fischer, et.al.)
- Intelligent Critic System for Architectural Design (Chun, H.W., Lai, E.M.)
- Making Argumentation Serve Design (Fischer, et.al.)
- Perspective Based Critiquing: Helping Designers Cope with Conflicts Among Design Intentions (Nakakoji, K., Sumner, T.)
- Real-time Critiquing of Integrated Diagnosis/Therapy Plans (Gertner, A.)
- Role of Critiquing in Cooperative Problem Solving (Fischer, et.al.)
- Transcending the Individual Human Mind – Creating Shared Understanding Through Collaborative Design (Fischer et.,al.)
Note: Many of these articles can be found in NEC Research Index
          
|