제품/시스템 디자인을 위한 도메인지식 기반 디자인 툴 개발

Background: Recently, the focus of user experience in the product/system interaction design fields has been expanded toward users' pleasant experience with producing high-quality results, not just easy and efficient use. For example, rice cooker users increasingly become interested in making delicious rice meals with the product, not just as household chore. Also, camera users' concern and expectation level of photo quality is increasing due to internal and external motivations. Seeking the product/system design methodology to help users produce high-quality results, the present paper particularly aims to develop a design-supporting tool, based on domain knowledge.
Methods: The paper first reviews prior research examples of design-supporting tools and knowledge-based design approaches. Then, the model of knowledge-based design process is proposed. The process consists of five stages: 1) DK (Domain Knowledge) Structuring, 2) Task Analyzing, 3) Task-DK Mapping, 4) Knowledge Delivering, and 5) Prototype Specification.
Result: Based on the process model, the knowledge-based design-supporting tool was developed. The 'photo-taking' domain was chosen as an example domain to explain the procedures of the developed tool. The research result was presented in the descriptions of the five modules and the information processed throughout the modules. A UI design case study was conducted in order to check up the usefulness of the design-supporting tool.
Conclusion: While existing design tools tend to be focused on the procedural guidance for solving problems, the proposed tool is developed for supporting product/system designers to be able to create designs that reflect domain knowledge, needed for problem-solving. In the future study, more elaborated case studies of designing products/systems using the tool will be conducted, and then the output designs should be evaluated through user tests.