Collaborative Mining and Writing of Design Knowledge

Mami Sakamoto, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Japan, t08418ms@sfc.keio.ac.jp Takashi Iba, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University, Japan, iba@sfc.keio.ac.jp Building community is often required to promote development and spread of cool ideas (Gloor, 2011). The process is started by a creator who has a cool idea; he / she talks to others about the idea, and then he / she finds a few people who want to help. They latch onto the idea and spare time to spread the idea, and they become a hot team named Collaborative Innovation Network (COIN). The team makes the prototype for the cool idea, therefore other people with interest can learn what the cool idea means and how it works. Thus, making prototypes is the heart to share creators idea with the followers. However, it is quite difficult to make prototypes if the type of idea is the know-how to make something, which we call design knowledge. To overcome this difficulty, in this paper, we introduce a new way to express design knowledge for sharing with others and building a community, where the design knowledge is described from the viewpoint of problem finding and problem solving. Actually, this kind of description has been done in the architecture and software engineering under the name of pattern languages (Alexander, 1977). In the pattern language, design knowledge is described as a pattern in a certain form, where the primary elements are Context, Problem and Solution. Here we propose a new method of mining and writing design knowledge, applying the form of pattern languages. This method provides how to express the tacit knowledge of a creator through collaborative interviews. There are two advantages to express design knowledge in the form of pattern language, according to the framework of Swarm Creativity (Gloor, 2011). First, it realizes fruitful collaboration between a creator and COIN; it helps them to concentrate on making appropriate product, since a creator needs to tell his / her design knowledge in the form of Context, Problem and Solution in the interview by COIN. Second, it provides media for spread the knowledge with others outside the COIN, because the product of the collaborative interviews is a pattern language, which can be used as media for sharing design knowledge. To demonstrate the method, in this paper, we study the case of our collaborative interviews whose topic is the design knowledge for facilitating inquired-based learning (Iba, et. al., 2011). Based on the case study, we explain how our proposed method works well with the Social System Theory (Luhmann, 1996) and the Creative System Theory (Iba, 2009) as follows. The Social System Theory focuses on communications of social process, where the concept of communication is defined as an event that is emerged when understanding both the meaning of information (what is uttered) and the intention of utterance (why it is uttered). Therefore, it is useful for understanding the aspect of communication in the collaborative interview; First, the connection among the elements in the form of pattern, that is context, problem, and solution, implies what is appropriate as an information (what is uttered) for on-going communications; Second, the obvious goal of the interview, that is making a pattern language, decrease the uncertainty of utterance (why it is uttered). The Creative System Theory focuses on discoveries of creative process, where the concept of discovery is defined as an event that is emerged when finding both the meaning of idea (what is associated) and the association (why it is associated). Therefore, it is useful for understanding the aspect of discovery in the 1

collaborative interviews; First, the form of pattern, that is context, problem, and solution, implies what is appropriate as an idea (what is associated) for on-going discoveries; Second, the obvious goal of the interview, that is making a pattern language, decrease the uncertainty of association (why it is associated). Thus, our study demonstrates that the method of collaborative interviews with the form of pattern language is useful way to help growing and spreading the design knowledge in the community.

References Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press. Peter, G. (2011). Coolfarming: Turn Your Great Idea into the Next Big Thing, American Management Association. Luhmann, N. (1996). Social Systems, Stanford University Press. Iba, T. (2009). "An Autopoietic Systems Theory for Creativity," in Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference 2009 Iba, T., Ichikawa, C., Sakamoto, M., and Yamazaki, T. (2011). "A Pattern Language for Designing Inquiry-Based Learning," in Pattern Languages of Programs Conference 2011 (PLoP11)

Proposed Length of paper: 10 pages