| Multimedia systems design generally requires a collaborative effort from a group of designers with a variety of backgrounds and tasks, such as content experts, instructional designers, media specialists, users, and so forth. The fact that the designers have totally different backgrounds and tasks may hinder their collaboration.;This research examined a new collaborative design environment, called the KMS-based design environment, in which multimedia designers could share their design knowledge on the Web freely. The KMS-based design environment consisted of three intelligent agents that were designed for supporting the knowledge management activities of multimedia designers. The intelligent agents were implemented by using JAVA SCRIPT and COLD FUSION.;Through two experimental groups, the research evaluated the usability of the KMS-based design environment in the area of multimedia systems design. The research findings showed that the KMS-based design environment was a promising environment for multimedia systems design. More specifically, the research findings indicated that the KMS-based design environment supported creating, securing, and retrieving knowledge, but it did not support distributing knowledge. In addition, the research found that the social interactions between group members played important roles in the success of the collaborative multimedia systems design and that the KMS-based design environment did not support the socialization of group members. Furthermore, the research found that the inability of the KMS-based design environment to support the socialization was linked to its low performance level in supporting the knowledge distributing activity. The research concluded that an ideal design environment should involve people, content (knowledge), process, and technology. |
