Modeling in the Design Multiverse

Abstract: Real-world design processes often involve the evolution and divergence of design paths (by branching, revising, merging, etc.), especially when multiple stakeholders or teams operate concurrently and/or explore different alternatives for complex and heterogeneous systems. Unfortunately, this variability in time and space can not be directly managed in current modeling spaces but requires resorting to external tools and methodologies. In order to tackle this problem, we introduce the Design Multiverse. The Design Multiverse aims to integrate in the modeling space a selection of revisions and variants, representing snapshots of a design state composed of multiple artifacts. This enables stakeholders to seamlessly trace, analyze, and manage design decisions, system variants, and their interdependencies. Concretely, in this paper we present a conceptual definition of the Design Multiverse, discuss usage scenarios such as model product lines and model/metamodel co-evolution, and propose an implementation leveraging the model federation paradigm.