Complex design problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses because the knowledge relevant to a problem is usually distributed among stakeholders. Bringing different and often controversial points of view together to create a shared understanding among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts. New media that allow owners of problems to contribute to framing and resolving complex design problems can extend the power of the individual human mind. Based on our past work and study of other approaches, systems, and collaborative and participatory processes, this article identifies challenges we see as the limiting factors for future collaborative human-computer systems. The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is introduced as an integrated physical and computational environment addressing some of these challenges. The vision behind the EDC shifts future development away from the computer as the focal point, toward an emphasis that tries to improve our understanding of the human, social, and cultural system that creates the context for use. This work is based on new conceptual principles that include creating shared understanding among various stakeholders, contextualizing information to the task at hand, and creating objects to think with in collaborative design activities. Although the EDC framework is applicable to different domains; our initial effort has focused on the domain of urban planning (specifically transportation planning) and community development. Permission to make digital / hard copy of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication, and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and / or a fee. Categories and INTRODUCTIONHuman-computer interaction (HCI) research over the last 20 years has made fundamental contributions to the creation of new paradigms and new forms of working, learning, and collaborating in the information age. Its major emphasis has been to develop new technologies (e.g., at the hardware, basic software, and application levels), new interaction techniques (e.g., graphical user interfaces), and new design approaches (e.g., usercentered, human-centered, work-oriented, and learner-centered design). Much of this research has emphasized and pioneered socio-technical approaches. In the process, HCI work has progressed from early concerns with low-level computer issues to a focus on people's tasks [Myers 1998;Newell and Card 1985;Norman 1990]. The greatest progress in HCI research has been made at the operator and task level, where events are studied in time scales ranging from microseconds to minutes (and in some cases hours or days). At these time scales, the relevant theory is drawn from psychology ...

Abstract:Self-directed learning is a continuous engagement in acquiring, applying and creating knowledge and skills in the context of an individual learner's unique problems. Effectively supporting self-directed learning is one of the critical challenges in supporting lifelong learning. Self-directed learning creates new challenging requirements for learning technologies. Domainoriented design environments address these challenges by allowing learners to engage in their own problems, by providing contextualized support, and by exploiting breakdowns as opportunities for learning. Economies of educational knowledge constitute an emerging concept in which communitiescontribute toward the creation of information repositories, which can be reused and evolved by all members of the community for the creation of new environments. We argue and demonstrate that domain-oriented design environments can serve as models for these economies, that a software reuse perspective provides us with insights into the challenges these developments face, and that the creation and evolution of these economies are best understood as problems in self-directed learning.

One fundamental challenge for the design of the interactive systems of the future is to invent and design environments and cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. Unfortunately, a large number of new media are designed from a perspective of viewing and treating humans primarily as consumers. The possibility for humans to be and act as designers (in cases in which they desire to do so) should be accessible not only to a small group of "hightech scribes," but rather to all interested individuals and groups. Meta-design characterizes activities, processes, and objectives to create new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and be creative.In this paper we discuss problems addressed by our research on meta-design, provide a conceptual framework for meta-design, and illustrate our developments in the context of a particular system, the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory. KeywordsConsumer and designer mindsets; designing "out of the box," domain-oriented design environments; open evolvable systems; Open Source; seeding, evolutionary growth, reseeding model; impact of new media on design; underdesigned systems.

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