it-code it in collaborative design yoke-chin lai aalborg university (denmark) may 22 nd 2006 phd...

IT-CODEIT-CODEIT in Collaborative Design

Yoke-Chin Lai

Aalborg University (Denmark)

May 22nd 2006

PhD Defence

22/5/2006 Y-C Lai PhD Defence, AAU 2

The Road Map Introduction

Background

Research Hypothesis

The Research Research Questions Case Studies and Important Findings Demonstrator – IT-CODE

Conclusion Contributions Future Research Lines


Concept

Knowledge Management

Literature Study

Pioneer_01

V. BushMemex

Pioneer_02

T. Nelson

CARD:nameItcode:ideaCARD:name

Hypertext

Itcode:idea

Pioneer_03

Demonstrator (IT-CODE)

D. EngelbartNLS

CARD:nameItcode:idea

Pioneer_04

T. Berners-Lee

WWW

Itcode:ideaCARD:name

Semantic Web

Ontology

Collaborative Design

Document-centric

Information Management

Design Knowledge

Transfer

RDF(S)

Design Meeting

Conventional Meeting Minutes

Innovative Meeting Minutes

Itcode:inspires

DC:contributor

Itcode:field

Itcode:field

Itcode:field

Itcode:powered_by

Itcode:field

Itcode:requires

Itcode:requires

DC:contributor

DC:language

Itcode:produces

Itcode:technique

Case StudiesItcode:proceeding

Future ResearchItcode:stimulating

Itcode:proposing

Itcode:study

Itcode:inspires

Itcode:experimenting

Itcode:improving

Itcode:inspires

Itcode:inspiresItcode:inspires

Semantic Web

Itcode:idea

Total Knowledge

ManagementItcode:applying Itcode:focuses

From Memex to IT-CODE


Background

Collaborative Design

Knowledge

shares

creates

uses

handles

Multidisciplinary team

Common Understanding

reaching

Information integration

Data interoperability

Knowledge (Tacit & explicit) transfer

ICTapplies

Semantic Web Tech.

IT-CODE??

Acquisition

Representation Dissemination

Storage

Retrieval

Search

IndexingKM

conducts

Problemshas_difficulty

to_improve

applies

extension_of

inadequate


The Research Hypothesis The Semantic Web technology is applicable to support

collaboration in the building industry.

On top of the Semantic Web technology, an innovative meeting minutes taking approach can be developed, to facilitate tacit design knowledge transfer by making explicit the meta-knowledge used to formalise

reasoning.


Research Questions

How do the multidisciplinary project stakeholders collaborate at the early project stage, the design stage?

How do project stakeholders monitor the design information flow? What technique do they use? What technology do they use?

How will the contemporary ICT help to improve the current practices?


The 3 Case studies

Objectives To study how the project stakeholders collaborate at

the design stage. To study the design information flow in real-life. To identify the weakness the practising project

information management strategy, if any.

Data collection methods Observations Semi-structured interviews

[case study]


The 3 Case studies

Project phase of study The conceptual design phase

Data analysis methodology The contextual design formalisms (five types of work

models)Sequence ModelFlow ModelCulture modelArtefact modelPhysical Model.

[case study]


The Information Flow in Design Meeting

Communication

Dialog

Action

Issues

Discuss

Stim

ulat

es

Meeting minutes

Agenda

Decide

Brings

Refers to

[case study]

Summ

arise


Summary of Findings

The implemented ICT supported codified knowledge management Codified knowledge

Well structured data, e.g., database, spreadsheet Semi-structured information, e.g., html/xml files Weakly structured information, e.g., texts/graphics/multimedia files

Tacit design knowledge was found incorporated implicitly in the weakly structured information.

Face-to-face meetings were favoured in the design phase. Meeting minutes were produced to summarise the discussion

contents in the meetings. Meeting minutes contained design rationale and reasoning

behind decisions.

[case study]


Constraints of Knowledge Management

Weaknesses identified from the case studies:

Difficulty to manage weakly structured information (natural language plain texts).

Difficulty to connect knowledge containers of various forms (e.g., books, digital databases, human minds).

Difficulty to formalise tacit design knowledge (e.g., design rationale, reasoning behind decisions).

Difficulty to make tacit design knowledge adequately explicit for both human and machine.

Difficulty to represent knowledge comprehensible to all targeted knowledge receivers.

[case study]


The Demonstrator Objectives

To be a knowledge management system that has the following functional requirements:

To integrate information distributed in different logic & physical

containers. To capture and store decision rationale. To contextualise discussion contents. To generate dynamic and semantically structured meeting minutes.

[demonstrator]


Semantic Web: The New Opportunity

The Semantic Web

It is an extension of the current web (Bernes-Lee, 2001)

It is to provide rich descriptive means for the current web

Information becomes both human and machine understandable

Ontologies are the core of semantic web

[demonstrator]

Source: Berners-Lee, T (2000), XML and the Web, http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/0906-xmlweb-tbl/slide9-0.html


Definition of Ontology

A formal explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation (Gruber, 93).

One of the main components in knowledge representation.

It can capture consensus knowledge

Its representation is both machine and human readable.

RDF Schema (RDFS) is an example of ontology language

Ontologies are sets of tuples.

Actor

Project

works_for

Person

is_a

Concept

Concept

Concept

relation

relation

[demonstrator]


RDFS: The Lightweight Ontology

Class Definitions

Property Definitions


The Concept Behind IT-CODERepresent information chunk as object

correlateXxxxxxx

Xxxxxx

xxxxxxx

Issue 2

Issue 1

Issue 3

Explicit relation

Represent document as the container of the information objects

object1

Object3

object2

[demonstrator]

Implicit relation


”Following his initial

review.....Jackadvised...”

12/08/03

Ytutut hgfhdHgjghgjh xxds

05/08/03

Annotate the Information

Object 1 Relation

e.g: causes, improves, solves, agrees_with, is_consistent_with,

has_alternative

Meta-tag

Object 2Meta-ta

g

An example of discussion issue in meeting dated 12/08/03:

”Following his initial review of the option 3 layout drawings, Jack advised that the deletion of one floor would reduce total vertical loads and the structural vertical member sizes are expected to be reduced.”

[demonstrator]


What is Meta-tag

Tag of metadata, e.g. <author>, <URI>, <type_of>

Metadata is ”data about data”

Useful to make information machine readable

Domain specific metadata can be defined and expressed in ontologies models.

Meta-tag

[demonstrator]


Examples of Metadata Elements

DCMI Wordnet ISO/IEC 82045-5Title LexicalConcept Document ID Global

Creator Verb Owner document ID

Subject Noun Version ID

Description Adjective Title

Publisher AdjectiveSatellite Summary

Contributor Adverb Creator

Date glossaryEntry Creator organisation

Type (resource type) similarTo Responsible organisation

Relation antonymOf Project name

[demonstrator]

Sources: •Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/•Wordnet, http://www.semanticweb.org/library/wordnet/wordnet-20000620.rdfs•International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), http://www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage


Information Integration

Differently strucrured information

Documenting

Accessing

Extracting

Interpreting

A

A-M1: ghj uyt hgjh lko ssda

A-M2: hjkhs hjwe fdsd nkjjh

B

B-M1: hkjh ssss hkjhwy

B-M2: kjkjlkj

B-M3: asere jkjd

B-M2

A-M1

A-M2

BA

IT-CODEWWW

Intranet

The web

B-M1

B-M3

[demonstrator]


Contextualise the Discussion Contents

Communication Dialog

Action Issues

Discuss

Stim

ulat

es Decide

Brings

Who raises the issue?

What is the issue type?

Problem?

Propostion/Alternative?

Solution/Agreement?

Are there any precedent cases?

What is the status of the issue?

What is the consequence?

Why does the issue occur?

How to solve the issue?

[demonstrator]


Ontology Model Excerpt – Class Definitions


Ontology Model Excerpt – Property Definitions

24

<Actor>Instance_001

agrees_with

<Proposition>

revi

ewer

causes

<Project stage>

project_stage<Decision>

Deletion of 1 floor...expect to be

reduced.

<Container> meeting

minutes_001

issu

e_ra

iser

contains

<Problem>Bla bla bla

improves_on

proj

ect_

stag

e

<Actor>Inst_002

<Location>URL:http://xxx.xx

has_location

proposes

<Role>has_role

has_name

has_

rol

e

has_name

The Data Model (Instance) [demonstrator]

is_solved_by

<Action>

Harry

Stan

Rose

cause

s

<Actor>

Inst_003

assi

gnee


RDF Excerpts


Protege 3.0

RDF data file

Sesame 1.1

MySQL

Tomcat 5.0

Ontology editor

Single user applet

Front-end data input

RDF data file generated

Simple but precise query

RDF(S) based repository

RDF(S) based precise query

Multi-user server environment support

Easily extensible knowledge base

Compatible with different type of database

Tools for IT-CODE

[demonstrator]


The Components of IT-CODE[demonstrator

]


Applet - Project & Meeting Attributes

How to solve the issue?


Applet – Issue Contextualisation

What is the consequence?Why does the issue occur?

Categorisation – to facilitate precedent search

Who raise the issue?

What is the issue status?

What is the issue type?


Applet – Discussion Trail Search

Query:

To search all issues that were discussed in the meeting dated 25 November 2003 and related to the schematic design process


[demonstrator]

The Semantic Web Client

the gateway to access the Sesame repository

Archives of previous projects

Search results


Conclusion

Contribution 1: The Innovative Meeting Minutes Information was structured based on semantic network. Information had better interoperability. Information was dynamically linked. Semantic search was supported. Form based user interface was used.


Conclusion

Contribution 2: The concept of

total knowledge management was applied in the demonstrator (IT-CODE).


Conclusion

Contribution 3: The concept of associative thinking was incorporated into the innovative meeting minutes to contextualise the discussion contents. As a suggestion to make explicit the reasoning behind

decisions.


Conclusion

Contribution 4: The emerging Semantic Web technology was suggested having the applicable potential to support design knowledge management in the building industry. A demonstrator was constructed using the ontological

representation approach and the corresponding ontology language

to support semantic search, to support semantic integration of different information resources, to make explicit the meta-knowledge, and to facilitate tacit knowledge transfer.


Future Research Lines

To use pre-defined domain-specific metadata in the ontology modelling process. E.g., ISO/IEC 82045-5 To investigate possible linking to IFC based product model

description. More efficient integration of domain knowledge.

To enable simulation of decision making process Need a more expressive ontology language with logic

support, e.g. OWL.

[conclusion]

OWL (Web Ontology Language), http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/


Future Research Lines To improve usability

To create an easy-to-use knowledge authoring environment.

Need a better system coherence.Seamless integration of the different knowledge authoring tools

(Protégé & Sesame) used.

Suggestion 1: Integrate with web-based Content Management tools, e.g. Wiki, Bloki.

Suggestion 2: Incorporate speech recognition tools and discourse annotation tools (natural language processing).

Knowledge authoring complications in discourse annotation tools. Immature speech recognition technology.

[conclusion]


Thank you.


Data-Information-Knowledge <Q&A

>


Sequence Model To illustrate the

sequence of activities conducted in a design progress meeting. To study the intent of

an activity To study the action

taken to achieve the intent.

To study the reasoning behind the action.

<Q&A>


Flow Model To study the

interaction and communication flow of the interviewees.

To study the technique/s used to organise roles.

To study what technology and/or tool the interviewees used to complete the tasks.

<Q&A>


Culture Model

To study the working culture of a group. To study the working

practices of the group.

To study how the different working practices influence one (person) another.

To study how the authority (power) is used to achieve the defined work objective.

<Q&A>


Artefact Model

To study the variety of artefact models used.

To study how does the model help to achieve more efficient communication and understanding sharing.

In the case studies, meeting minutes were chosen.

<Q&A>


Physical Model To study the connection between the physical

environment with the working culture and communication flow.

Meeting Room

Meeting Table

Alice

Joe

Chris

Shawn

Henry

Chung (QS)

Lawrence

Pat MPatrick Y

drawings

Log book

Log b

ook

Log book

Log book

Log

b

ook

Log book

Meeting agenda

drawings

<Q&A>


Vannevar Bush – Memex (1945)

"He [mankind] has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory."

Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," LIFE 19:11 (1945)

Source: ArtMuseum.net, http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Bush.html

<Q&A>


Ted Nelson – Hypertext (1963)

"Everything is deeply intertwingled"

Hypertext diagram from Ted Nelson's Literary Machines

Source: ArtMuseum.net, http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Nelson.html

<Q&A>


Douglas Engelbart – Augmentation (1968)

"Our goal of augmenting the human intellect... will exhibit more of what can be called intelligence than an unaided human could... by organizing his intellectual capabilities into higher levels of synergistic structuring."

oNLine System (NLS) demonstration at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference

Source: ArtMusuem.net, http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Engelbart.html#

<Q&A>


Tim Berners-Lee – WWW

The current web (web 1.0) Contents are structured in

paragraphs of natural language chunks (using for instance the <p></p> tag).

Prominent technologies are hyperlinks and keywords search

Limited support in information processing

<Q&A>

it-code it in collaborative design yoke-chin lai aalborg university (denmark) may 22 nd 2006 phd...

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