Knowledge Deployment: How to Use Design Knowledge

The research has two backgrounds. One is the recognition that design can be regarded a largely knowledge-based activity. Historically, research in design knowledge began with knowledge representation and reasoning. Design knowledge representation looked at knowledge about design objects and design processes. While the former is obvious, design process knowledge is all about how to design and is related to design reasoning that deals with how to use design object knowledge. In contrast, design reasoning was mostly concerned about how to computationally arrive at conclusions, but not how to use which knowledge, which is the central question of knowledge deployment. As theories and technologies to deal with knowledge made progresses, research focuses gradually extended to such topics as modeling, acquisition and capturing, learning, discovery, data mining, maintenance, management, reuse and sharing. These addressed, however, little about how to make knowledge well ready for use.