Biological Life Cycle: A New Interpretation for the Evolution of ICT Applications

We address Design-Based Research from the perspective of engineering for interactive applications. In particular, we investigate the lifecycle of Design-Based Research projects in the realm of advanced educational technologies in opposition to more “rational” development models, commonly used in software engineering. We codify a metaphor based on biological evolution to account for the characteristic complexity, unpredictability and growth of ICT lifecycles and to ground the different kind of rationality underlying the development of these applications. Like living organisms, they continuously adapt to their environment, by changing, evolving new features, sometimes retaining old ones, the rationale of which becomes opaque and difficult to explain (remember). We base our discussion on a 8 years experience with programs in multi-users virtual environments for education (and entertainment) that have involved so far more than 9,000 students from 20 countries (3 continents).