Concept formation from design cases: Why reusing experience and why not

This paper describes an environment that supports novice information system s designers in initial concept formation by oganising design 'cases' in evo lving networks, automatically clustered by a neural agent to suggest genera lisations of design patterns. Flexible reframing of the cases also supports creativity by uncovering less obvious but relevant design concepts. If the responsibility of linking related design cases is distributed to a populat ion of learners who contribute their cases and tentative generalisations, g enetic techniques can be applied to sustain the evolution of the base of ca ses towards ontological forms that better guide and constrain the case reus e process, thus supporting knowledge transfer. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.