Strategies for interactive design systems

An information processing model of human problem solving is used to develop strategies for the design of systems for the interactive generation of designs. Systems of this type are currently not strongly developed anywhere, nor does there exist in the literature a paradigm for their creation. Design is a task which requires different interactive support than that traditionally provided by CAD systems. In this paper those differences are uncovered by comparison of two tasks; one, named definition in this paper, which seems to be well supported by existing systems and the other, the task of design. Use of an information processing model of human problem solving shows that differences between the tasks can be found in every potentially variant portion of the model.The information processing model is again used as a framework to propose mechanisms to support design. These mechanisms act by changing the underlying phenomena upon which the information processing model is built and thus effecting changes, either parametric or structural, in the model. The relative importance of the proposed mechanisms is discussed, leading to the conclusion that the interactive support of search is the most strategic direction for future research