17 Patterns in design discourse: A case study J.M. Reddy B. Chan S. Finger Engineering Design Research Center Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Abstract Knowledge-intensive CAD must support knowledge building in design environments. Since knowledge sharing is a central activity in the collaborative design process, much of the design knowledge is embedded in the design discourse. For this reason, systematic capture of the design discourse may provide a practical means for knowledge building. This paper presents a case study of a design project and analyzes the discourse to illustrate this point. Our purpose is also to under- stand characteristics of the discourse in order to support its capture as well as to support knowl- edge building. The case study is a project that was undertaken by a geographically distributed team, involved a non-routine design problem, and employed several computer tools for team col- laboration as well as for specific design tasks. In this paper, we present several quantitative mea- sures for the different types of design information, the use of tools and media, and the role of different types of knowledge in the design process. We interpret these measures in the context of the design project to begin to answer the questions: how could knowledge-intensive CAD have aided in the design process and how can we support building and reuse of knowledge in such col- laborative design projects? Keywords Design discourse, collaborative design, knowledge building, knowledge intensive CAD. 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper, we look at knowledge-intensive CAD from the perspective of knowledge building; that is, how design knowledge is constructed and shared in design environments. We propose that T. Tomiyama et al. (eds.), Knowledge Intensive CAD © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 1996