Designer-Centric Spatial Design Support

Abstract

Design-centric systems focus on searching or generating design alternatives using design retrieval or generation algorithms. Conversely, designer-centric systems focus on providing design feedback to refine design ideas through interactions with designers when creating design alternatives. This paper proposes a novel designer-centric design support system that analyzes user design moves and provides real-time feedback to augment the spatial design exploration process. Specifically, we developed a system that integrated sketching, design retrieval, and feedback features for tablet PCs. The user experiments involving 21 professional spatial designers verified that the proposed system helped users interact with their designs, navigate novel design spaces, reevaluate design moves, and embody design ideas. These findings provided implications for developing an interactive design exploration method for coordinating designers and computers, thereby extending design support system research. Further, we discuss applications and challenges in implementing the system on the web, revealing possibilities for data trailing of design moves.