COMPUTER-SUPPORTED 2-LEVEL INFORMATION-SYSTEM DESIGN

Information system (IS) design is (or at least it should be) a very hu man-intensive process. Such processes cannot be tackled with hard engi neering approaches but must be approached in a ''softer'' way. In that manner we determined two main issues that must be considered in desig ning successful information systems: (1) we must obey the principles o f participance, holism, and endless learning and (2) we must be able t o answer two basic questions, namely which of many possible computeriz ed ISs to design and how to design the selected one. Considering above propositions we asserted that to achieve successful IS design we must first design an appropriate design paradigm. This activity was called the metadesign and a metadesign paradigm two-level design. MetaMet is a specific implementation of two-level design based on soft system me thodology and metamodeling. Because MetaMet is a relatively complex pr ocess and in many real-world situations two basic questions can be red uced to ''Which methodology to use?'' we decided to support MetaMet wi th appropriate computer tools. We designed an intelligent tool based o n neural network concepts that helps the MetaMet user during the trans formation from a root definition into a real-world model. It assists o ne in selecting appropriate design paradigms, design activities, gener al design guidelines, and so forth. We present this tool and the two-l evel design in this paper.