Article

The decision pattern: capturing and communicating design intent

Author:

David R. WrightAuthors Info & Claims

SIGDOC '07: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication

Pages 69 - 74

https://doi.org/10.1145/1297144.1297160

Published: 22 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

The design of large software systems requires designers to apply critical thinking skills to resolve the complex design problems these systems typically generate. Cultivating these skills in novice designers involves exposing them to the complexities of these problems, allowing them to critically explore the problem and application domains, and providing a means to communicate the rationales for the design decisions they make. In a classroom learning environment, the processes students use to think about and organize what they know and do not know about the design problems is more important to the students' learning than the artifacts they generate. Effectively communicating to the instructor why they make their decisions facilitates assessment and feedback on the thinking and organizing process, and enhances the learning experience. This paper presents a pattern or template for capturing and communicating this information in a concise yet information-rich format. The author's experience using this pattern in a teaching and learning context is discussed to validate the effectiveness of this pattern.

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Cited By

Fant JTaylor RGall HMedvidović N(2011)Building domain specific software architectures from software architectural design patternsProceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/1985793.1986026(1152-1154)Online publication date: 21-May-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1985793.1986026
Huggins JWallace C(2010)Abstract state machines and the inquiry processFields of logic and computation10.5555/1983702.1983723(405-413)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1983702.1983723
Huggins JWallace C(2010)Abstract State Machines and the Inquiry ProcessFields of Logic and Computation10.1007/978-3-642-15025-8_19(405-413)Online publication date: 2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15025-8_19
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The decision pattern: capturing and communicating design intent
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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cover image ACM Conferences

SIGDOC '07: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication

October 2007

286 pages

ISBN:9781595935885

DOI:10.1145/1297144

General Chair:
David Novick
The University of Texas at El Paso, TX
,
Program Chair:
Clay Spinuzzi
The University of Texas at Austin, TX

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 22 October 2007

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SIGDOC07: The 25th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication

October 22 - 24, 2007

Texas, El Paso, USA

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Cited By

Fant JTaylor RGall HMedvidović N(2011)Building domain specific software architectures from software architectural design patternsProceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/1985793.1986026(1152-1154)Online publication date: 21-May-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1985793.1986026
Huggins JWallace C(2010)Abstract state machines and the inquiry processFields of logic and computation10.5555/1983702.1983723(405-413)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1983702.1983723
Huggins JWallace C(2010)Abstract State Machines and the Inquiry ProcessFields of Logic and Computation10.1007/978-3-642-15025-8_19(405-413)Online publication date: 2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15025-8_19
Neto AFortes Rda Silva Filho AO'Neill HAparicio MCosta CProtopsaltis A(2008)Multimodal interfaces design issuesProceedings of the 26th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication10.1145/1456536.1456597(277-278)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1456536.1456597

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