Video Capture Interface Prototype for Design Knowledge Capture and Pedagogical Implications

Design engineers and teams have found value in recording (in analog or digital form) the details of their process—including meeting notes, sketches, physical prototypes, enactments, and so on—so that they can revisit, or even reuse, these details at a later time, or multiple later times, even on another project years later to build upon the ideas of others. Design knowledge capture and reuse is an underutilized practice for professional, as well as student, design teams We studied students enrolled in a graduate level academic-year-long course in design practice at Stanford, which focuses on developing students’ skills in design process, project management, physical prototyping, and global team dynamics. Experienced designers value design knowledge capture and reuse highly but are challenged to communicate and facilitate their value to students through graded activities alone. This chapter describes our own design process to address the teaching team’s challenge by quickly prototyping a “critical experience prototype” to help students learn, use, and reuse a video-based design archiving system. We built and tested a (relatively) large, table-top, electronic pushbutton that design team members could press whenever they encountered a moment, or insight, that they considered potentially important for their team’s prospects. A press on the “recording engineering design” (or RED) button initiates the recording and storage of video of the surrounding several minutes of team activity. We found during testing that (1) the button was fraught with novelty effects during usage, and (2) it would occasionally break the flow of thought and progress during meetings. We also find that while the prototype might effectively capture salient design moments, it still does not address the needs of design knowledge reuse, as it does not assist team members with the subsequent consumption of that documented knowledge, or emphasize the value of design knowledge reuse.