Robert Woodbury

Simon Fraser University · School of Interactive Arts and Technology

In this paper, we argue that computer aided design media should support interactivity so that designers can rapidly create, evaluate, and modify plentiful design alternatives. This will enable an engaging dialog with the design situation. To enable this in parametric modeling tools, we use a research through design approach and propose an interacti...

The existing research on design space exploration favors the exploration of multiple parallel designs, however the act of exploring a design space is still to be integrated in the design of new digital media. We conducted an experiment to understand how designers navigate through large numbers of design alternatives generated from parametric models...

Computer-aided design (CAD) tools aim to assist designers in their professional work, one key aspect of which is devising, evaluating, and choosing among multiple design alternatives. Yet, with few and limited exceptions, current tools handle just a single design model at a time, forcing users to adopt various ad hoc tactics for handling multiple d...

Today’s generative design tools and large screen displays present opportunities for designers to explore large number of design alternatives. Besides numerous studies in design, the act of exploring design space is yet to be integrated in the design of new digital media. To understand how designer’s search patterns will uncover when provided with a...

Shape schema grammars generalize parametric shape grammars so that both rules and the objects to which they apply are expressed with shape schemata. This paper defines shape schema grammars. It starts with a notation for schemata in general and shape schemata in particular. Schema equality is shown to have at least three possible definitions, of wh...

Sustainability and energy efficiency are crucial to many sectors and all stakeholders at local, municipal, national, and global scales. According to the city of Vancouver, buildings contribute more than 50 percent of the city’s total GHG emissions. With the introduction of standards such as LEED the hope has been significant reductions in the footp...

Although the Discrete Event System specification (DEVS) has over recent decades provided systems engineers with a scalable approach to modeling and simulation, the formalism has seen little uptake in many other disciplines where it could be equally useful. Our observations of end-user programmers confronted with DEVS theory or software suggest that...

It is well accepted that search is an effective model for design. Newell and Simons' Human Information Processing model is foundational to this view. Designers use symbols and structures to express, store, off-load, recall, and manage their work.They mix general and detailed elements, organize their problemspace differently, seek ways to identify r...

Data surrounds each and every one of us in our daily lives, ranging from exercise logs, to archives of our interactions with others on social media, to online resources pertaining to our hobbies. There is enormous potential for us to use these data to understand ourselves better and make positive changes in our lives. Visualization (Vis) and visual...

Software tools assist designers in their professional work, one key aspect of which is devising, evaluating, and choosing among multiple design alternatives. Yet, with few and limited exceptions, current tools handle just a single design model at a time, forcing users to adopt various ad-hoc strategies for dealing with multiple design alternatives....

Scripting has become an integral part of design work in Computer-Aided Design (CAD), especially with parametric systems. Designers who script face a very steep learning and use curve due to the new (to them) script notation and the loss of direct manipulation of the model. Programming In the Model (PIM) is a prototype parametric CAD system with a l...

This paper reports on the design and control of a responsive envelope based on the rotation of tessellated components. The study investigates responsive and dynamic approaches for building facades and envelopes to regulate solar shading, light control, views and thermal gain within the building. It is well known that near real-time visual output fr...

Robert Woodbury discusses how the emergence of Smartgeometry (SG) relates to developments in design exploration and methodology. He argues for six central ideas that form the flux towards better design media: dataflow programming; ubiquitous scripting; the web of abstraction; symbol amplifiers; the web of mathematics; and human-in-the-loop data imp...

We introduce a propagation-based parametric symbolic model approach to supporting analytic provenance. This approach combines a script language to capture and encode the analytic process and a parametrically controlled symbolic model to represent and reuse the logic of the analysis process. Our approach first appeared in a visual analytics system c...

Analysts need to keep track of their analytic findings, observations, ideas, and hypotheses throughout the analysis process. While some visual analytics tools support such note-taking needs, these notes are often represented as objects separate from the data and in a workspace separate from the data visualizations. Representing notes the same way a...

Given that the actions of building inhabitants can account for significant variations in building energy use and their overall impact on the environment, both buildings and their systems can be designed to anticipate and even transform behavior toward more sustainable patterns of living and building use. In the residential sector, differences in in...

Experts consider green construction and the social, institutional, and cultural changes associated with it, through a sociological and organizational lens. Buildings are the nation's greatest energy consumers. Forty percent of all our energy is used for heating, cooling, lighting, and powering machines and devices in buildings. And despite decades...

In this poster, we present two prototype systems (CAMBRIA and Dependency Graph Interface) as an extension to existing parametric CAD tools that enable parallel generation and editing of design alternatives. CAMBRIA is a prototype built for 2D vector drawings. It features a small but powerful set of multi-state parallel editing operations (pass obje...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) and its open standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are becoming popular in the design phase in the Architecture and Construction industry. Here, we focus on integrating BIM and DEVS (Discrete Event Systems Specification) simulation of occupancy analysis. We present a case study for Copenhagen's New Elephant...

Nowadays, numerous Computer-aided Design (CAD) software packages support Building Information Modeling (BIM). BIM software can benefit of advanced simulation in the pre-design phase of construction projects. In this case, we show focus on models of the emergency evacuation regarding the security and safety. We analyze the evacuation simulation of a...

Exploring problems through multiple alternatives is a key aspect of design. In this paper, we present a prototype system as an extension to existing parametric CAD tools that enables parallel generation and editing of design alternatives. The system is built on two fundamental ideas. First, use of subjunctive dependency graphs enables simultaneous...

Knowing the locations of weak-to-strong topic shifts in a design history enables hierarchical segmentation of that history. The segmentation can be the basis of hierarchical visualization, that is, semantic zoom, and more, such as visualization of co-location, co-citation, and density of linking. This research shows that a fine-grained, sub-topical...

CZSaw [1] is a visual analytics tool for sense-making across entities, entity collections, and relations with a focus on augmenting the analysis process. It uses a variety of flexible data visualizations to represent, explore, and compute networks of entities and relations from different perspectives. CZSaw is designed to provide a replayable recor...

Film spaces can sometimes communicate narrative experiences to the viewers as strongly as those conveyed through characters. Audiences have grasped the feeling of Blade Runner’s (Scott 1982) despair in a dystopian futuristic city, Alice’s nonsensical endeavors in Wonderland (Geronimi et al. 1951), Dorothy’s eventful adventures on the yellow brick r...

Investigative analysts need overviews of large amounts of data, which is a challenge when working with non-numerical data such as document collections. We present Semantic Zoom View (SZV), an interactive document collection visualization implemented as part of the CZSaw visual analytics system. SZV uses a focus + context technique to provide an ove...

In this paper, the effects of design-task specificity level on design space exploration are studied. An experiment was conducted to study the effects of goals and methods on design process and design solutions by 16 individual designers, who performed two design tasks under different combination of design goal and method specifications. Protocol an...

Design space exploration is a long-standing focus in computational design research. Its three main threads are accounts of designer action, development of strategies for amplification of designer action in exploration and discovery of computational structures to support exploration. Chief amongst such structures is the design space – the network st...

Design is a key present and future contributor to the wealth of nations. It is a discipline in the sense that it is a coherent body of thought and practice, but in academia is almost invariably distributed across disciplines concerned with particular kinds of design. Successful design work involves many such disciplines. Contemporary design practic...

Disciplines outside of engineering, for instance, architecture, are adopting parametric modelling as a design representation. This paper reports on three aspects of the adoption process, which is largely being conducted through multi-day workshops outside of formal university course settings. Fist, the structure and process of such workshops may be...

The Canadian Design Research Network (CDRN) is a consortium of academic institutions and industrial partners working together to improve design outcomes in Canadian society through research in design. The network is composed of specialized research clusters associated with major design schools across Canada and includes the key disciplines of archi...

The ability of parametric computer-aided design systems to generate models rapidly enables designers to explore the downstream impacts of changes to key design parameters. However, the typical modeling functions provided in the parametric systems can become insufficient when such exploration is needed for increasingly complex parametric design mode...

Designers work in groups. They need to share information either synchronously or asynchronously as they work with parametric modeling software, as with all computer-aided design tools. Receiving information from collaborators while working may intrude on their work and thought processes. Little research exists on how the reception of design updates...

In this study, we experimentally evaluated two GUI prototypes (named "split" and "integrated") for parametric CAD modeling. Participants in the study were asked to perform a number of D model comprehension tasks, using both interfaces. The tasks themselves were classified into three classes: parameterization, topological and geometrical tasks. We m...

The VAST 2010 Challenge consisted of three separate datasets which we investigated with three student teams using three different tools in order to solve each Mini Challenge (MC1-3). The teams met to share findings, request supporting evidence from the other mini challenges, and raise questions for other teams to investigate further. We used CZSaw...

CZSaw is a visual analytics tool for sense-making across entities, documents, and relations with a focus on supporting the analysis process. It uses a variety of flexible data visualizations to represent and explore networks of entities and relations from different perspectives. CZSaw supports clustering documents and entities into smaller groups t...

Programming in the model locates programming elements and tasks contiguous with computer aided design (CAD) models. It aims to reduce the separation between acts of programming, modeling and design, using both spatial coincidence to reduce task shifting and common CAD techniques to simplify the expression of code. Using techniques from visual progr...

With contributions from Brady Peters, Onur Yuce Gun and Mehdi Sheikholeslami Design is change. Parametric modeling represents change. It is an old idea, indeed one of the very first ideas in computer-aided design. In his 1963 PhD thesis, Ivan Sutherland was right in putting parametric change at the centre of the Sketchpad system. His invention of...

Design is inherently collaborative. However, current computational design (CAD) systems are based on a single-user model in which the end artifact may be shared among several people, but the process is poorly represented and supported. We aim to understand and evaluate the mid-level patterns of work that recur across designers and tasks in the cont...

Visual analytics tools provide powerful visual representations in order to support the sense-making process. In this process, analysts typically iterate through sequences of steps many times, varying parameters each time. Few visual analytics tools support this process well, nor do they provide support for visualizing and understanding the analysis...

The advances of generative and parametric CAD tools have enabled designers to create designs representations that are responsive, adoptable and flexible. However, the complexity of the models and limitation of human-visual systems posed challenges in effectively utilizing them for sensitivity analysis. In this prototyping study, we propose a method...

Geometry has long been a generator of architecture. In traditional Persian architecture, Rasmi domes project a drawing onto a predefined 3D geometry. In fact, the word 'rasmi' and the verb for drawing in Persian have the same linguistic root. Projection is readily done in manual drawings or conventional CAD programs. From a constraint perspective,...

Design space exploration is long-standing motivating ideas in computer-aided design. It realises this vision through a model of design states for making and moving amongst states and an organisation of states into a structure called a design space. Using a design space structuring mechanism based on a subsumption relation, this paper sketches a the...

This paper reports our experience of designing a human-centric repository to support learning object authoring. The users of DesignPatterns.ca are designers who want to explore, communicate and share parametric modeling knowledge and strategies. Aiming to support such a community, we provided succinct functions to meet their evident needs, kept the...

Patterns express generic solutions to a well-described problem. In parametric modeling patterns can be used to describe a tactical level of work, above mechanics and below design. We describe three patterns and show how they can be used through an example model.

The NEAR (navigating exhibitions, annotations and resources) panel is a method of managing digital collections and user preferences through collaborative filtering and graphically revealing implicit data relations such as sharing, reference and similarity. It is implemented on AldrVIldrRE, an online multimedia repository. AldrVIldrRE supports semi-...

This paper intends to analyze, compare, understand and explore the data relations among a collection, the collected items and user-created meaning appearing in different digital applications. Details of such relations are introduced and investigated with reference to several actual systems. In order to represent these three components in a way easy...

This paper intends to analyze, compare, understand and explore the data relations among a collection, the collected items and user-created meaning appearing in different digital applications. Details of such relations are introduced and investigated with reference to several actual systems. In order to represent these three components in a way easy...

Modeling and maintaining relationships in a parametric model compounds the work of the designer. When major changes in design direction take place, the work invested in the modeled relations is often lost. We contend that an implicit relational modeling approach provides for loosely coupled relations between the 'parts' of a design and mitigates th...

Our research aims to understand the mid-level patterns of work that recur across designers and tasks. Our users comprise active architects and civil engineers. The hypothesis is that making such patterns explicit will result in improved expert work practices, in better learning material and suggestions for improvements in parametric design. The lit...

Parametric CAD applications enable designers to model and maintain both objects and relationships. Selection is the first step in the process of establishing relationships in a CAD model. Because designing is characterized by a process of change and development, establishing and maintaining relationships can contribute significant overhead to a par...

� Abstract— This paper describes the NEAR (Navigating Exhibitions, Annotations and Resources) panel, a novel interactive visualization technique designed to help people navigate and interpret groups of resources, exhibitions and annotations by revealing hidden relations such as similarities and references. NEAR is implemented on AVIRE, an extended...

Design space exploration is a long-standing focus in computational design research. Its three main threads are accounts of designer action, development of strategies for amplification of designer action in exploration, and discovery of computational structures to support exploration. Chief among such structures is the design space, which is the net...

The act of design is a complex of actions and abilities that is evolving and often highly individual. Given the context of human–computer interaction, and a commitment to the model of design space exploration, we identify two axes that help position efforts to realize this model: the spectrum of strengths and needs that stretches from the machine t...

Parametric design systems model a design as a constrained collection of schemata. Designers work in such systems at two levels: def- inition of schemata and constraints; and search within a schema collec- tion for meaningful instances. Propagation-based systems yield ecient algorithms that are complete within their domain, require explicit speci- f...

New media blurs the traditional author-reader distinction and brings in new roles. Extant media tools intend to only support the acts of reading and authoring, but do not focus on those abundant acts taking place inside the blur. This paper posits the concept digital interpretation as a metaphor to enable exploration for system designs for active r...

There is a potential conflict in the design of interactive narratives. The exercise of interaction in digital environments, including games, may interfere with the experience of story. The article uses the interactive CDROMCEREMONYOFINNOCENCE as a case study in the resolution of this potential conflict. It frames the design of this interactive narr...

Design space exploration is a long-standing focus in computational design research. Its three main threads are accounts of designer action, development of strategies for amplification of designer action in exploration and discovery of computational structures to support exploration. Chief amongst such structures is the design space - the network st...

As a first manifestation of a recently launched international research project, this position paper outlines an approach to use ontologies as a means to tame the high degree of complexity involved in most collaborative (architectural) design projects which derives from the involvement of their numerous participants. Traditionally, these various inv...

1974) we see games are useful for enhancing specific skills in a structured yet playful environment. Cheng (Cheng, 1999) alludes to games containing narratives that become less dependent on logic. And Caillios (Caillios, 1961) sees games as removing the mysterious. Again Bower describes games as "…a contest in which there are agreed upon rules and...

Play and design can be put into metaphorical relation. To do so is to let each inform the other. As part of a larger project, we have used the metaphor of play in creating and using learning resources for early design education. In doing so, it became apparent that the entailments of play, the other metaphors that both frame and are framed by play,...

This paper outlines the process of making a series of highly detailed CAD models showing the form and construction of a group of contemporary award-winning houses by leading Australian architects. It discusses the issues of collecting information, clarifying details with the architects, the differences between ?as built? and ?as designed? descripti...

We have developed several deep cases based on actual and hypothetical built environments and have used these in a strongly student-centred instructional style. On reflection, our approach seems qualitatively different from norms in architecture schools and from other case-based learning practices. We introduce it here under the rubric of the Leitmo...

Design space explorers support designers through the meta- phor of exploration, a guided movement through a space of possibilities. As systems, design space explorers present a mixed-initiative environ- ment in which designers engage in their work helped by a computer to an extent both computationally possible and desired by the designer. Design sp...

This paper explores Geometric Typed Feature Structures as a concept for carrying geometric information based on the theory of Typed Feature Structures(Carpenter, 1992). Geometric Typed Feature Structures cover an important aspect of design space explorers in which the symbol level representation must carry 3D geometric information. Order Types are...

This paper highlights our application of XML as a messaging and storage format for parametric 3D modelling and pattern-oriented online teaching. As a recent format for data description and transport technology XML is designed to allow communication between arbitrary data platforms - and to communicate purpose-insensitively. We have used it to commu...

In current computational building design theory and practice, representation schemes depend upon a set of formal operations for creating, changing and querying a representation. With a few notable exceptions, these operations do not provide ways of comparing representations to determine how representations are alike and how they are different. We h...

Design space explorers are information-rich environments conceived for providing effective support for electronic design processes. A subsumption-based design space structures the partial designs in the environment by a relation of information specificity. It provides formal exploration operators for predictive, goal-directed movement in the underl...