Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:31:17.691Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Concept formation as knowledge accumulation: A computational linguistics study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2006

ANDY DONG
ANDY DONG
Affiliation:
Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Language plays at least two roles in design. First, language serves as representations of ideas and concepts through linguistic behaviors that represent the structure of thought during the design process. Second, language also performs actions and creates states of affairs. Based on these two perspectives on language use in design, we apply the computational linguistics tools of latent semantic analysis and lexical chain analysis to characterize how design teams engage in concept formation as the accumulation of knowledge represented by lexicalized concepts. The accumulation is described in a data structure comprised by a set of links between elemental lexicalized concepts. The folding together of these two perspectives on language use in design with the information processing theories of the mind afforded by the computational linguistics tools applied creates a new means to evaluate concept formation in design teams. The method suggests that analysis at a linguistic level can characterize concept formation even where process-oriented critiques were limited in their ability to uncover a formal design method that could explain the phenomenon.

Keywords

Concept FormationDesign LanguageLatent Semantic AnalysisLexical Chain Analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
AI EDAM , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 2006 , pp. 35 - 53
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Benami, O. & Jin, Y. (2002). Creative stimulation in conceptual design. Proc. ASME 14th Int. Conf. Design Theory and Methodology, Paper No. DTM-34023, Montreal.
Brereton, M.F., Cannon, D.M., Mabogunje, A., & Leifer, L.J. (1996). Collaboration in design teams: mediating design progress through social interaction. In Analysing Design Activity (Cross, N., Christiaans, H. & Dorst, K., Eds.), pp. 319–341. Chichester: Wiley.
Buchanan, R. (1989). Declaration by design: rhetoric, argument, and demonstration in design practice. In Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism (Margolin, V., Ed.), pp. 91–109. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coyne, R.D., Newton, S., & Sudweeks, F. (1993). A connectionist view of creative design reasoning. In Modeling Creativity and Knowledge-Based Creative Design (Gero, J.S. & Maher, M.L., Eds.), pp. 177–209. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cutkosky, M., Engelmore, R., Fikes, R., Genesereth, M., Gruber, T., Mark, W., Tenenbaum, J., & Weber, J. (1993). PACT: an experiment in integrating concurrent engineering systems. Computer 26(1), 28–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vries, B., Jessurun, J., Segers, N., & Achten, H. (2004). Word graphs in architectural design. In Design Computing and Cognition '04 (Gero, J.S., Ed.), pp. 541–556. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.CrossRef
Dong, A. (2005). The latent semantic approach to studying design team communication. Design Studies 26(5), 445–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fellbaum, C. (1998). WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Foltz, P.W., Kintsch, W., & Landauer, T.K. (1998). The measurement of textual coherence with latent semantic analysis. Discourse Processes 25(2–3), 285–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, A.C.B. & Howard, H.C. (1992). Acquiring design knowledge through design decision justification. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 6(1), 59–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gero, J.S. (1990). Design prototypes: a knowledge representation schema for design. AI Magazine 11(4), 26–36.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, G. (1996). The designer as a team of one. In Analysing Design Activity (Cross, N., Christiaans, H. & Dorst, K., Eds.), pp. 65–91. Chichester: Wiley.
Jacobsen, K., Sigurjónsson, J., & Jakobsen, Ø. (1991). Formalized specification of functional requirements. Design Studies 12(4), 221–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landauer, T.K. (1999). Latent semantic analysis: a theory of the psychology of language and mind. Discourse Processes 27(3), 303–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, P., Lawson, B., & Scott, P. (1995). Can concurrent verbalization reveal design cognition? Design Studies 16(2), 237–259.Google Scholar
Mabogunje, A. & Leifer, L. (1997). Noun phrases as surrogates for measuring early phases of the mechanical design process. Proc. ASME 9th Int. Conf. Design Theory and Methodology, New York.
Oxman, R. (2002). The thinking eye: visual re-cognition in design emergence. Design Studies 23(2), 135–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, M.S. (1999). Group communication theory. In The Handbook of Group Communication Theory and Research (Frey, L.R., Gouran, D. & Poole, M.S., Eds.), pp. 88–165. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Regli, W.C., Hu, X., Atwood, M., & Sun, W. (2000). A survey of design rationale systems: Approaches, representation, capture and retrieval. Engineering with Computers 16(3–4), 209–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schön, D.A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.
Shannon, C.E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal 27, 379–423 and 623–656.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silber, H.G. & McCoy, K.F. (2002). Efficiently computed lexical chains as an intermediate representation for automatic text summarization. Computational Linguistics 28(4), 487–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sonnenwald, D.H. (1996). Communication roles that support collaboration during the design process. Design Studies 17(3), 277–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stempfle, J. (2004). Personal communication to Andy Dong, Sydney [e-mail].
Stempfle, J. & Badke-Schaub, P. (2002). Thinking in design teams—an analysis of team communication. Design Studies 23(5), 437–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valkenburg, R.C. (1998). Shared understanding as a condition for team design. Automation in Construction 7(2–3), 111–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van der Lugt, R. (2005). How sketching can affect the idea generation process in design group meetings. Design Studies 26(2), 101–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, W.H., III & Agogino, A.M. (1996). Case-based conceptual design information server for concurrent engineering. Computer-Aided Design 28(5), 361–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeitz, C.M. (1997). Some concrete advantages of abstraction: how experts' representations facilitate reasoning. In Expertise in Context (Feltovich, P.J., Ford, K.M. & Hoffman, R.R., Eds.), pp. 43–65. Menlo Park, CA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence.