CHS: Small: Exploring Design and Evaluation Space through Crowds and Communities

设计带来新产品，推动经济增长；新技术使更多的人参与设计过程成为可能。例如，一些在线社区成员现在彼此分享产品的设计，允许每个成员进一步发展一个想法，并根据自己的需要定制它。原则上，这些设计选择和探索可以结合起来，围绕给定问题提供更广泛的可能设计空间；反过来，这可能会带来更好的整体设计和解决方案。此外，对大型设计空间的集体探索可能会为目前难以解决或不可能解决的问题提供解决方案。该项目旨在了解大量的合作个体如何通过更好地理解和指导他们对可能设计的探索来创造新产品。这项工作的目标是发现可用于提高物理产品（如3D打印机生产的产品）和信息产品（如维基百科中的文章）的设计速度和质量的工具和技术。该项目旨在通过大量合作个体的实践来改进设计。这种改进将通过观察所产生的设计的质量、备选方案的总体覆盖范围和探索过程的效率来衡量。这项研究将持续三年。第一年将试图理解设计的描述如何与设计过程和结果相关。这将通过五项活动来实现。第一个活动将着眼于两个不同领域的现有数据：3D物体的设计和文章的文本。接下来的两项研究将涉及人类设计师的实验，他们将被展示相同物体的替代描述，以及替代物体的相同描述。第一年的最后一项活动与扩大计算机的参与有关：将构建练习以吸引高中生的参与。第二年将学习设计标准的变化如何指导设计空间的探索。人类参与者将被置于以不同方式应对标准变化的两种条件中的一种。第三年将使用实验来发现工作更长时间的工具如何提高设计师的生产力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Design leads to new products that drive economic growth; new technologies make it possible for many more people to be involved in design processes. For example, some online community members now share designs for products with each other, allowing each member to further develop an idea and customize it for their own needs. These design choices and explorations could, in principle, be combined to give a wider picture of the space of possible designs around a given problem; this, in turn, might lead to better overall designs and solutions. Further, collective exploration of large design spaces might afford solutions to problems that are currently difficult or impossible to solve. This project seeks to understand how large numbers of cooperating individuals can create new products through better understanding and guiding their exploration of possible designs. The goal of the work is to discover tools and techniques that can be used to increase the speed and quality of design for both physical products, such as those produced by 3D printers, and informational products, such as articles in Wikipedia. This project seeks to improve design as practiced by large sets of cooperating individuals. This improvement will be measured by looking at both the quality of the designs produced, as well as the overall coverage of alternatives and the efficiency of the exploratory process. The research will proceed over a three-year period. The first year will seek to understand how descriptions of design are related to design processes and outcomes. This will be accomplished through five activities. The first activities will look at existing data from two different domains: designs of 3D objects, and texts of articles. The next two studies will involve experiments with human designers who will be presented with alternative descriptions for the same objects, as well the same descriptions for alternative objects. The last activity of the first year is related to broadening participation in computing: exercises will be constructed to attract participation from high school students. The second year will study how changes in design criteria can guide the exploration of design spaces. Human participants will be placed in one of two conditions that address changes in criteria in different ways. The third year will use experiments to discover how tools that work over longer periods of time can augment the productivity of designers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.