This paper discusses the approach and analysis of an empirical study that suports the hypothesis that concept generation and deveopment occur most frequently in informal media where design capture tools are the wekest. This statement has strong implications for the capture and reuse of design knowledge because conceptual design generates the majority of initial ideas and directions that guide the course of the project. Many important decisions are made along with rationales that support these decisions, but since these rationales are expressed in design activities such as brainstorming sessions and conversations, the design rationale is rarely captured and the knowledge is lost. While traditional product documentation captures explicit knowledge such as requirements, specifications, and design decisions, often the contextual or tacit knowledge of the design group is lost. The paper concludes with a description of a computer-mediated system, called "Recall", that addresses the results of our findings by providing a means of capturing and indexing informal media to facilitate design reuse.
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