Design Promotions: Elevate Design Reuse Interactively

Candidate: Wilson Chang
Type: Master of Applied Science, Information Technology (MASc-IT), School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: July 27, 2004
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Rob Woodbury

Abstract

This thesis focuses on using computatoin for design tasks.  It addresses issues of reuse in current computer aied design (CAD) software.  The thesis inherits generative research concepts to promote reuses of previous valuable efforts in new context.  The aim is to achieve a 'symbolic sketch', freely exploring design alternatives with ease; promoting design, not labour.

The familiar class of operations known as undo/redo has proven to be a valuable navigation tool for reusing prior design states.  In practice thoug, its use is frustrating: undo often undoes too much.  Its essential informal semantics are that it returns the user to a prior state by recapitulating all intervening states.  Why not give the user greater control over which aspects of a design to undo?  An alternative is to seek to reuse prior work in any logically-coherent pattern - user input is a precious commodity.  Every operation a user makes should be a potential source of reuse.  The area of generative ystems provides insights in a search for alternatives to undo, in particular that prior user and system actions can be changed and reused in new contexts.  Generalizing undo conceptually and in its user interface, this thesis introduces a concept labelled as design promotions.  It describes system designs that demonstrate a tight coupling between interactive authorship and system-led generation, that treat past user actions as valuable intentional statements, and that treat alternative user choices as first-class objects of concern.  In practice these three properties emphasize reuse.

The thesis proposes potential candidates for implementing design promotion strategies.  through examples, it demonstrates greater control to both elevate and deconstruct a design state interactively over specific representations.