CASE-DELIVERER: Making Cases
Relevant to the Task at Hand

Kumiyo Nakakoji

Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Colorado
Campus Box 430
Boulder, Colorado 80309-0430; and

Software Engineering Laboratory
Software Research Associates, Inc., Tokyo, Japan

E-mail: kumiyo@cs.colorado.edu



Abstract. Designers are limited in exploiting a catalog knowledge base of
design cases because they may be unable to articulate what they are looking for,
or may be unaware that potentially useful catalog examples exist. KID
(Knowing-In-Design), a domain-oriented, knowledge-based design environment 
for kitchen floor plan design, integrates the use of the catalog-base with its
design tools. The information given through KIDSPECIFICATION (for specifying
a design requirement) and KIDCONSTRUCTION (for graphically constructing a
floor plan) provides representations of the designers task at hand, and recorded
design rationale in its argnmentation-base is used to infer the relevance of
catalog examples to the task at hand. The CASE-DELIVERER component orders
catalog examples according to the partial specification, and the
CATALOGEXPLORER subsystem allows designers to explore further the catalog
space in terms of the task at hand. The study and assessment of the
mechanisms have revealed that delivered cases helped designers reframe both a
problem and a solution, and have encouraged designers to articulate a new
portion of design knowledge, which addresses the knowledge acquisition
problem.


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