Presidential Young Investigator Award: Knowledge Engineering/Design Theory and Methodology

在产品设计的早期阶段，迫切需要计算机辅助设计（CAD）方法来帮助设计师应用人为因素原理。实现这一目标需要在以下方面取得进展：(1)如何在计算机中获取并有效地组织与设计问题相关的各种知识；(2)如何在设计周期的早期使用计算机辅助方法最好地应用这些不同类型的知识。这项研究将在明年集中于进一步发展建模方法，作为计算机辅助设计的基础。这将需要综合安全工程、人工智能、决策分析和人为因素等领域的重要原理。这一研究成果将为组织和应用人因知识来解决设计问题提供一个有用的计算机知识结构。

There is a critical need for computer aided design (CAD) methods for assisting designers to apply human factors principles during the early stages of product design. Attaining this objective requires progress in determining (1) how to obtain and efficiently organize within a computer the diverse types of knowledge relevant to design problems and; (2) how to best apply these diverse types of knowledge early in the design cycle using computer aided methods. This research will be concentrated over the next year on further development of a modeling approach as a foundation for computer aided design. This will require significant synthesis of principles from the fields of safety engineering, artificial intelligence, decision analysis, and human factors. This research effort will be a computer knowledge structure useful for organizing and applying human factors knowledge to design problems.