The Possible Role of CAAD Systems in Initiating Innovation in the Design Studio

Design is a social phenomenon and the previous research highlights that design precedents and social interaction between designers including negotiation, collaboration and communications is essential to initiate creativity and the production of innovative design products. CAAD systems aim is to help the architect in formulating and developing design ideas. Researchers suggest that knowledge based systems can be integrated with CAAD systems so it would provide the architect with design knowledge that would him/ her to recall design precedents/ solutions thus link it to the design problems. Nevertheless, CAAD systems can provide limited help regarding the production of innovative design. Furthermore, the attention of the designers of knowledge based systems is focused on architects rather than the end product. On the other hand, most of the CAAD systems have web communication tools that enable designers to communicate their with colleagues and partners in business. However, none of these systems have the capability to capture useful knowledge from the design negotiations. Students of the third to fifth year at College of Architecture, University of Dammam were surveyed and interviewed to find out how far design tools, communications and resources would impact the production of innovative design projects. The survey results show that knowledge extracted from design negotiations would impact the innovative design outcome. It highlights also that present design precedents are not very helpful and design negotiations between students, tutors and other students are not documented thus fully incorporated into the design scheme. The paper argues that the future CAAD systems should be capable to recognize innovative design precedents, and incorporate knowledge that is resulted from design negotiations. This would help students to produce innovative design products.