Refining the Process of Sharing Problem-Solving Experience across Domain: A Hermeneutic Study

TL;DR: Hermeneutics was applied to studying a process of eliciting domain experience from multimedia developers, and recording this knowledge in the form of design patterns, and a well-known process of “pattern mining” was elucidated and then refined and improved through the circles of hermeneutic revisions.

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the application of hermeneutics to studying and refining an established process. While tradition sets hermeneutic inquiry in the realms of text interpretation, its analytic features can assist in dealing with many aspects of dynamic phenomena under study, such as development processes, which can be re-cast and subsequently re-interpreted as text analogues. In our research, we specifically focus on hermeneutic emphasis of historical and factual context, on iterative development of emergent understanding of information sources, and on dealing with the prejudices and biases of both researchers and their subjects. In this paper, hermeneutics was applied to studying a process of eliciting domain experience from multimedia developers, and recording this knowledge in the form of design patterns. As a result, a well-known process of “pattern mining” was elucidated and then refined and improved through the circles of hermeneutic revisions.