CAREER: Building Knowledge Infrastructure for CollaborativeDesign

这笔赠款为职业奖项提供资金，目的是探索协同设计理论，开发支持协同设计的知识基础设施，并创建新课程来教授设计和协作原理。将开发一个新的组织决策框架，以确定协同设计的特点，该框架将协同设计视为一套通过协调联系相互作用的个人决策过程。在组织决策框架的基础上，将开发一个基于代理的知识基础设施来支持协同设计。与传统的基于互联网的信息基础设施不同，知识结构将作为获取、存储和应用知识的知识媒介，以支持设计师的决策和协调过程。即将开发的新课程包括两个学术课程，工程信息建模与设计理论和方法，以及一个面向行业的短期课程，协同工程的应急技术。上述理论探索和技术发展将为课程提供重要的见解和材料。从课程中获得的经验反过来也将为研究提供重要的反馈。如果成功，这项研究将通过整合工程设计、协作工作和组织理论的想法和文献，并确定设计、协调和组织过程之间的连贯联系，从而为知识做出贡献。知识基础设施代表着一种超越互联网连接的新技术方向，并将影响协作支持技术的未来发展。新课程着眼于未来对机械工程师的要求，旨在通过将设计和协作理论与信息技术相结合来回应这些要求，并将其纳入工程设计课程。

This grant provides funds for a CAREER award with goals to explore a theory for collaborative design, develop a knowledge infrastructure to support collaborative design, and create new courses to teach principles of design and collaboration. A new organizational decision-making framework will be developed to characterize collaborative design that views collaborative design as a set of individual decision-making processes that interact with each other through coordination links. Based on the organizational decision-making framework, an agent-based knowledge infrastructure will be developed to support collaborative design. Unlike the conventional Internet-based information infrastructure, the knowledge structure will function as a knowledge media that acquires, stores, and applies knowledge to support designers' decision-making and coordination processes. The new courses to be developed include two academic courses, Engineering Information Modeling and Design Theory and Methodology, and an industry-oriented short course, Emergent Technologies for Collaborative Engineering. The theoretical exploration and technology development described above will provide important insights and materials for the courses. The experiences gained from the courses will, in turn, provide important feedback to the research as well. If successful, this research will contribute to knowledge by integrating ideas and literature of engineering design, collaborative work, and organization theory and by identifying coherent links among the design, coordination and organizing processes. The knowledge infrastructure represents a novel technology direction beyond the connectivity of the Internet and will impact on future development of collaboration support technologies. The new courses address the future requirements for mechanical engineers and aim to respond to the requirements by combining theory of design and collaboration, together with information technologies and add them into engineering design curriculum.