Computer and communication technology should help engineers share ideas about problems and solutions. This paper claims there are no effective tools. This is surprising given 15 years of active research and development (R&D) [1], the ubiquity of document-sharing systems such as Google Docs and Dropbox, and several open/free wikis and blogs. These are informal tools based on natural language. This paper is about a tool that disciplines the discussion; it is called TeamMind.

The authors present a single case study in which two designers use the tool to structure and share the reasons for different designs. It expresses rationales in terms of the authors’ shared design thinking process model (S-DTPM) theory that each thought should be classified as an issue, option, solution, rule, criterion, annotation, or operation. These are linked in a directed graph just like the graphical issue-based information system (gIBIS) notation and Compendium notation [2]. The arrows follow intuitive rules. The operations are ways of sharing perspectives: argument, evolution, association, and fusion. Researchers may wish to look into these operations. The authors demonstrate a Tcl/Tk prototype tool, which seems to work. However, in my experience, rigid methods are unpopular. Indeed a very similar Compendium tool had a Web site [2] that is now dead. Practitioners will need a lot more evidence before accepting TeamMind and the theory it enforces.