Re-use or re-invent? Understanding and supporting learning from experience of peers in a product development community

We describe usage patterns of a design information database, and discuss issues of learning and knowledge sharing through socially and technologically mediated interactions in a product design community. In the five years spanning 1994 to 1999, a database of captured design information was made available to students in a graduate level project course at Stanford University. A large amount of database access data was analyzed to discover usage patterns concerning the issue of learning from experience of peers, past and present. The results from quantitative analysis of database access log were augmented by qualitative user interviews, in which several important social issues around the usage of such peer learning systems were exposed.