CRITICS FOR KNOWLEDGE-BASED DESIGN SYSTEMS

Expert critics have been built to critique human performance in variou s areas such as engineering design, decision making, etc. We suggest t hat critics can also be useful in the building and use of knowledge-ba sed design systems (KBDSs). Knowledge engineers elicit knowledge from domain experts and build a knowledge-based design system. The system g enerates designs. The amount of knowledge the system possesses and the way it applies the knowledge directly influence the performance of if s designs. Therefore, critics are proposed to assist 1) acquiring suff icient knowledge for constructing a desirable system, and 2) applying proper knowledge to generating designs. Methodologies of equipping a K BDS with critics are developed. Our practice in building and using a K BDS shows the applicability and capability of these critics.