Deriving Design Knowledge Graph for Complex Sociotechnical Systems Using the AIA Design Thinking

The AIA design thinking has been validated in complex design tasks, which includes three overlapping design thinking fields and uses the knowledge field theory as a theoretical mechanism of knowledge flow among design thinking fields. Meanwhile, the design of complex sociotechnical systems highly relies on multidisciplinary knowledge and design methods. Despite the emergence of knowledge management techniques (ontology, expert system, text mining, etc.), designers continue to store knowledge in unstructured ways. To facilitate the integration of knowledge graph and design thinking, we introduce an integrated approach to structure design knowledge graph with the AIA design thinking, which organizes existing design knowledge through Agent (concept)-Interaction (relation)-Adaptation (concept) framework. The approach uses an optimized convolutional neural network to accomplish two tasks: building concept graph from text and stimulating design thinking information processing for complex sociotechnical system tasks. Based on our knowledge graph, the validation experiment demonstrates the advantages of promoting the designer’s extension of idea space and idea quality.