Taxonomy for Understanding Knowledge Captured in Documents By Designers

Vijaykumar, Gokula A.V.; Chakrabarti, Amaresh

Abstract

In this competitive scenario of product development, product success is substantially influenced by satisfaction of the knowledge needs of designers. In literature many tools and methods are proposed to support satisfaction of these needs. But, adoption of these methods in industrial set-ups is minimal. This may be due to an inadequate understanding of the knowledge needs of designers in an industrial set-up. This research attempts to bridge this gap by undertaking a descriptive study in an industry. The research question we address in this paper is “what knowledge is captured in formal documents?” In order to answer the question, we converted the content of formal documents into potential questions which they answer. We propose a taxonomy of knowledge on the basis of analyzing the questions generated from formal documents. Since the analysing the above questions using elements within each independent category in the taxonomy will lead only to a partial understanding of the knowledge captured, we converted each question into a generic form with the help of the taxonomy. These questions are aimed at providing an understanding about: (i) relationships between the elements in the taxonomy and (ii) the underlying structure of the knowledge. We argue that this taxonomy and generic questions should aid in a better understanding of the knowledge captured by designers.

Citation

Vijaykumar, G. A., & Chakrabarti, A. (2007). Taxonomy for Understanding Knowledge Captured in Documents By Designers. In DS 42: Proceedings of ICED 2007, the 16th International Conference on Engineering Design

• Conference Name: 16th International Conference on Engineering Design, 2007
• Conference Location: Paris, France
• Start Date: Jul 28, 2007
• End Date: Jul 31, 2007
• Publication Date: 2007
• Deposit Date: Apr 12, 2019
• Journal: Guidelines for a Decision Support Method Adapted to NPD Processes
• Publisher: The Design Society
• Book Title: DS 42: Proceedings of ICED 2007, the 16th International Conference on Engineering Design
• Keywords: Taxonomy, Knowledge, Documents, Questions
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1393513