A Case-Based Approach to Creative Design

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Design is a knowledge-intensive and experience-intensive task. For the most part designers create new designs by adapting a combining previous designs. While much research in the past few years has gone into investigating the processes involved in routine design, almost none has addressed issues related to creative or non-routine design. We propose to investigate the processes involved in creative design and to build experimental systems that do creative design in the domains of meal planning, architecture (office design), and mechanical design. This investigation will capitalize on previous work in design, and will look at the ways in which routine problem solving processes can be used or extended to create novel solutions to problems. It will also extend previous work on case-based reasoning, looking at how previous cases can be used in novel ways. The work will concentrate in four areas: design specification restructuring, exploration of design alternatives, merging of several design alternatives, and non-routine adaptation. The first two are necessary for what engineers call conceptual design, a design stage in which the design specification itself is defined. The last two look at the ways fixes or patches to partial designs can be done in novel ways. An understanding of design processes will enable the creation of the right kinds of design tools to help designers with their tasks and will help to build the kinds of tools and to develop the kinds of curricula that can best be used to train designers of the future.