He got his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. His main areas of research are design rationale methods and software. He has extensive experience in the capture, management and delivery of design rationale in architectural design, product design, software design and policy making. He created the first hypertext support for design rationale and was the first to integrate this support into 3D computer-aided design. His current research focuses on automating the capture of design rationale through computer-based natural language processing. He has done extensive work on creating websites and software supporting design of extraterrestrial habitats for NASA, Johnson Engineering (a NASA contractor), the Mars Society and Nexterra, an educational non-profit. His web-design group has received a Scientific American award and a Webby.