Annotation in Design Processes: Classification of Approaches
Year: 2009
Editor: Norell Bergendahl, M.; Grimheden, M.; Leifer, L.; Skogstad, P.; Lindemann, U.
Author: Li, Chunlei; McMahon, Chris; Newnes, Linda
Series: ICED
Section: Design Information and Knowledge
Page(s): 251-262
Abstract
Collaboration among product designers, manufacturers and end users is a key factor for success in the design process. Effective concurrent design is determined by good communications. Design model reuse and design process reuse also have numerous contributions to shortening the design cycle, thus further strengthening competitive capabilities. In this paper, annotation is proposed as an inherent valuable in design to assist these essential factors. Based on an investigation of the state-of-the-art of annotation approaches in various disciplines, mainly focused on engineering design, annotations are classified into six major categories, in terms of the target audience, the annotation rendering system, the targeted media, the usage and functions of the annotation, the location of the annotation storage and the representation used for the annotation. Each category is further divided into sub-classes. A series of observations is presented in which the use of annotation in the design process was addressed. At the end of this paper, challenges in annotation technologies are presented and discussed.
Keywords: semantic annotation, procedural annotation, classification, collaborative engineering design, design cycle