A Speech Act Theory-based information model to support design communication through annotations

The aim of this paper is to describe an annotation model based around design representations. The model tends to promote more successful co-operation between design actors and enables more systematic knowledge sharing. Our annotation model is a set of digital artefacts, which have a semantic dimension. These artefacts aim to improve the design communication through the elicitation of knowledge about the context. We develop a linguistics pragmatics approach, based on Speech Act Theory to characterise annotations in design co-operation. By following the utterance and illocutionary force concepts, we develop locutionary and illocutionary annotation acts concepts. Then, we present an information model on the basis of these concepts. Finally, we propose functionalities for an annotation tool based on our approach.