Design Rationale Knowledge Management: A Survey

Design rationale is an explicit expression of the reasons behind decision making when designing an artifact. Despite its potential wide usage recognized by researchers and practitioners, it is still hard to be captured in practice. Most of research considered design rationale as a kind of tool from the scientific and engineering view and ignored humanity factor from the management view. From the perspective of knowledge management, we provide an introduction to the definition, acquisition, representation, integration, application of design rationale in this paper. We conclude with a discussion about the potential causes why the design rationale is hard to capture.