UCRD–Onto: a knowledge framework for user-centered design in residential built environments

Abstract

Purpose Effective information sharing and knowledge reuse are critical in user-centered residential design, ensuring designers have the necessary information at the right time. However, current practice is usually hindered by fragmented, tacit knowledge and a lack of standardized mechanisms to capture and reuse cross-disciplinary user insights, rendering user-experience factors subjective and difficult to formalize. This study aims to address these issues by proposing an integrated, requirement-oriented ontology that formalizes occupant needs into a unified, machine-readable framework, enabling interoperable, traceable decision-making toward more comfortable, human-responsive living spaces. Design/methodology/approach UCRD–Onto, a domain ontology for user-centered residential design, was created through a hybrid process that combines METHONTOLOGY and Ontology? 101. The ontology encompasses four conceptual domains–requirements, design, context, and measurement–and organizes knowledge into seven principal classes including occupant-user, activity, psychological comfort, physical comfort, residential design, constraints and usability performance. Findings Evaluation confirms that UCRD–Onto delivers a formal, standardized vocabulary for user-centered residential design, accurately capturing design problems while aligning with established concepts and user requirements. Successful deployment in both the description-based validation task and the prototype information-retrieval system further demonstrates the ontology's practical value for context-specific knowledge retrieval and application. Originality/value The ontology provides the first formal, shared vocabulary for the residential built environment design domain, helping resolve coordination issues and communication barriers between humans and machines. It also advances user-centered residential design ontology development by integrating traditional methodologies with layman insights from social media, enriching the ontology with non-expert perspectives.