Baptism of fire of a Web-based design assistant

DYNAMO – a Dynamic Architectural Memory On-line – is a Web-based design assistant to support architectural design education. The tool is conceived as an (inter-)active workhouse rather than a passive warehouse: it is interactively developed by and actively develops its users' design knowledge. Its most important feature is not merely that it presents students with design cases, but that those cases trigger in-depth explorations, stimulate reflection and prime discussions between students, design teachers and professional architects. Whereas previous papers have focused on the theoretical ideas behind DYNAMO and on how Web-technology enabled us to translate these ideas into a working prototype, this paper reports on the prototype's baptism of fire in a 4 year design studio. It describes the setting and procedure of the baptism, the participation of the studio teaching staff, and the reactions and appreciation of the students. Based on students' responses to a questionnaire and observations of the tool in use, we investigated whether DYNAMO succeeded in engaging students and what factors stimulated/hampered this engagement. Despite the prototype nature of the system, students were noticeably enthusiastic about the tool. Moreover, DYNAMO turned out to be fairly 'democratic', in the sense that it did not seem to privilege students with private access to or prior knowledge of computer technology. However, the responses to the questionnaire raise questions about the nature of students' engagement. Three factors revealed themselves as major obstacles to student (inter-)action: lack of time, lack of encouragement by the teachers and lack of studio equipment. Although these obstacles may not relate directly to DYNAMO itself, they might have prevented the tool from functioning the way it was originally meant to. The paper concludes with lessons learned for the future of DYNAMO and, more in general, of ICT in architectural design