A Rationale-based Model for Architecture Design Reasoning

3.6. Summary
Other methods are research-oriented and there are issues in their effectiveness to capture
and communicate design rationale. A design rationale method that supports comprehensive
rationale computing (e.g. for rationale traceability and inference) might be in
conflict with the ease of design rationale capture and communication. One of our objectives
is to find a compromise where sufficient design rationale could be captured easily,
and its payoffs outweigh the costs.
3.6 Summary
This chapter reports the state of the research in design rationale and its application in architecture
design. We have reviewed various design rationale methods and how researchers
propose to use them to deliberate design and support maintenance. We have examined
past work on argumentation-based design rationale methods as well as other kinds of design
rationale methods. We have discussed their purposes for deliberating design, capturing
knowledge, supporting maintenance and inferencing design.
We have reviewed the applications of these design rationale methods and have found
some issues. The key issues are the cost of capturing design rationale and the difficulties in
communicating such knowledge. A number of other usability issues are also summarised
in this chapter. They give us a guide to develop a new method.
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