Creative Design:
Reasoning and Understanding

Marin Simina and Janet Kolodner

College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
{marin, jlk}@cc.gatech.edu


Abstract. This paper investigates memory issues that influence long-term 
creative problem solving and design activity, taking a case-based
reasoning perspective. Our exploration is based on a well-documented
example: the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. We
abstract Bells reasoning and understanding mechanisms that appear
time and again in long-term creative design. We identify that the understanding 
mechanism is responsible for analogical anticipation of design
constraints and analogical evaluation, beside case-based design. But an
already understood design can satisfy opportunistically suspended design
problems, still active in background. The new mechanisms are integrated
in a computational model, ALEC1, that accounts for some creative behavior 
in case-based design.
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