The design, implementation, and evaluation of an interactive multimedia environmental design research information system: Architectural design review as case study

This dissertation reports on the design, implementation, and evaluation of an interactive multimedia information system for environmental design research knowledge (IMMEDRIS). One of the primary goals of IMMEDRIS is to leverage the Internet as a channel for accelerating the dissemination and sharing of environmental design research (EDR) knowledge. To meet the requirement of the different user groups, a number of subsystems were designed to facilitate a complex set of views of EDR information for different contexts and applications. The prototype of IMMEDRIS as deployed has a tutorial and a decision aiding subsystem installed as a pilot project and evaluated in their function supporting the decision making process required by local government aesthetic-control regulations.; Philosophical discussions and empirical research on the fundamental importance of categories to both learning and communication provides the framework for the design of IMMEDRIS. The design of the tutorial subsystem relies on the idea of visual learning developed in cognitive science and the notion of ostension explicated by Wittgenstein. The decision aiding subsystem is predicated on the notion of judgment as a contingent and contextual practice rather than as a practice guided by determinately fixed categories. Based on accounts by Kant and Wittgenstein on the role of examples in learning concepts and making judgments the decision aiding subsystem relies on a purely procedural criteria under a standard of reasonable method. It outlines a decision procedure which relies on our ability for "empirical classification" and "empirical predication."; With aesthetic judgment as a paradigmatic example and the architectural design review function of most local governments in the United States as case study, the dissertation seeks to locate the goal of objectivity and the methodology of quantification of much EDR within a broader normative framework to give their findings meaning.; The project that forms the basis of this dissertation offers a tool that enables the application of concepts derived from EDR to problem solving and decision making. The dissertation evaluated the effectiveness and utility of the tutorial and decision aiding subsystems of the prototype. It was evaluated for usability and its effectiveness in improving a decision making task.