Towards Balanced Comprehension within C-det, a Toolbox for Design Engineers during Conceptual Design

This paper describes how we are developing C-DET, a knowledge portal and toolbox for designers during conceptual design. In two prototypes of the C-DET system we have established two approaches in making available the tools and knowledge of our system. One approach is to link tools and knowledge sources to a phase structure, so designers can search and browse for knowledge using the phase they are in as guidance to the sought knowledge. The other approach is based on the designer’s notion of the specific aspect that he/she is working on. We are investigating the appropriateness of these approaches, and this paper describes the differences in the approaches and our initial achievements.