Knowledge Delivery: Facilitating Human-Computer Collaboration in Integrated Design Environments

Contents

This paper illustrates our approach of building an integrated knowledge-based design environment, which facilitates knowledge delivery mechanisms. The KID (Knowing-In-Design) design environment provides a specification and a construction components which allow a user to specify design problem requirements at abstract levels, and to form a solution by direct manipulation in a domain of kitchen floor plan design. A partial problem specification and solution construction given through the components represent the user’s task at hand to be shared with the design environment. The environment dynamically identifies and informs of a possible breakdown in a partial design, and delivers information from the knowledge bases that are inferred to be relevant to the identified task at hand. The study of KID indicates not only that the system has improved design processes, but also that the delivery mechanism is an effective method to elicit knowledge from designers, addressing the knowledge acquisition problem.