Designing Knowledge Management System for Supporting Craftsmen’s Collaboration beyond Temporal Boundaries

Abstract

Knowledge of traditional craft practitioners has been transmitted through demonstration in master-apprentice relations. These rare skills are in danger of being lost due to their low productivity and labor intensiveness in our modern industrialized society. In collaboration with traditional craft practitioners in the metal casting industry, we designed an interactive knowledge management system that captures and passes on distributed tacit knowledge of experts. We found that collaborative social practice with focus on computational alternatives helped craftsmen with limited design knowledge to recognize and reflect upon their own skills, as well as values of the industry. Furthermore, technologically enhanced communication possibilities beyond temporal boundaries encourage craftsmen to conduct seamless skill transfer to the next generation. We discuss how design participation of craftsmen led to mindset changes and argue how their receptive collaboration contributed to the design life cycle of a knowledge management system.