Design_net: a online knowledge gateway for industrial design education and research activities

This paper presents Design_net, a knowledge-based system to the online digital display, retrieval and archiving of rich media resources for industrial design education and research. It addresses the needs of end-users (teachers, researchers and students) and content providers interacting with the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano. The project moves from the assumption that traditional modalities of archiving and presentation currently adopted by the Politecnico and other academic institutions are not coherent with industrial design process and its need of project-support materials. The typical outputs of industrial design process are 3D models or 2D graphics, not just texts or simple images, the materials for which the usual method and technique of archiving and retrieval are conceived and developed. The challenges, philosophy and methodology in creating this evolving Web-based, cataloguing, multimedia knowledge-base to VR design resources are discussed. Finally, the related system and prototype are described.