Development of web-based design management system through user participatory design and use-case modeling

The construction industry has several phases in which a variety of stakeholders are involved. As construction projects are becoming larger, more complex and more diverse, the design phase has become a more important factor for the success of projects than ever before. However, it is considered that most of the design work carried out in the actual design process is intangible. Such recognition assumes that the design phase is more unsystematic and arbitrary, which finally weakens the competitiveness of the whole project. In order to solve these problems, this study developed an integrated design management system (IDMS), which consists of 8 modules including the design document, schedule, quality, and building permit management. This study is also intended to validate the effectiveness of the newly developed system. Two characteristics have made this research significantly different from previous studies. Firstly, the users of the system including architects and other design professionals were continuously involved from the development phase to the validation phase. The other unique characteristic is that the actual design project was applied as a test bed in the final validation stage. The research team applied the actual data which had been generated during each business process, and the effectiveness of the system implementation was verified. The authors expect that such a user-centered approach enables the system to be more robust and effective.