A software development and evolution model based on decision-making

Design is a complex activity whose purpose is to construct an artifact which satisfies a set of constraints and requirements. However the design process is not well understood. The software design and evolution process is the focus of interest, and a three dimensional software development space organized around a decision-making paradigm is presented. An initial instantiation of this model called 3DPM(sub p) which was partly implemented, is presented. Discussion of the use of this model in software reuse and process management is given

Capturing design knowledge

A scheme is proposed to capture the design knowledge of a complex object including functional, structural, performance, and other constraints. Further, the proposed scheme is also capable of capturing the rationale behind the design of an object as a part of the overall design of the object. With this information, the design of an object can be treated as a case and stored with other designs in a case base. A person can then perform case-based reasoning by examining these designs. Methods of modifying object designs are also discussed. Finally, an overview of an approach to fault diagnosis using case-based reasoning is given

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Background In the product design field, different stakeholders communicate with each other with design constraints. This paper reports on how designers use different constraints in the sketch phase. Methods Senior students majoring in industrial design participated in the design experiment. Their idea sketches and interview data were collected, which were then categorized with a coding scheme developed from Lawson"s design problem model. Results There are three major findings. First, unlike architects, product designers consider not only "designer constraints", but also other generators" constraints in the sketch phase. Second, the constraints related to the interaction between users and objects mostly fall into external constraints. This reflects the fact that most user interactions with products occur on the surface. Lastly, fewer constraints in client and legislator categories are adopted while a large number of constraints in the user category are used by designers. Conclusion Based on the findings, we argue that if Lawson"s model is applicable to the product design field as well as architecture, it needs to be modified or further developed by considering the characteristics of product design that are different from those of architecture.close

An Exploratory Study Comparing the Core Concepts of Information Systems Development and Software Engineering

The goal of this study is to apply a multidisciplinary approach towards the discovery of core concepts in the art and science of design. This study advances the intellectual body of knowledge for design science by uncovering common areas of agreement between information systems (IS) and computer science (CS) encouraging the development of new design theories within each individual field. This research avoids the trap of finding “yet another methodology” by merging the two dichotomous paradigms of design-as-natural-science and design-as-human-science, and by viewing the common concepts from these approaches through various philosophical lenses. These philosophical lenses ensure that the foundations for art and science of design will be capable of explaining the laws and theories of design and not merely reproduce a set of rules and procedures

Determining the Limits of Automated Program Recognition

This working paper was submitted as a Ph.D. thesis proposal.Program recognition is a program understanding technique in which stereotypic computational structures are identified in a program. From this identification and the known relationships between the structures, a hierarchical description of the program's design is recovered. The feasibility of this technique for small programs has been shown by several researchers. However, it seems unlikely that the existing program recognition systems will scale up to realistic, full-sized programs without some guidance (e.g., from a person using the recognition system as an assistant). One reason is that there are limits to what can be recovered by a purely code-driven approach. Some of the information about the program that is useful to know for common software engineering tasks, particularly maintenance, is missing from the code. Another reason guidance must be provided is to reduce the cost of recognition. To determine what guidance is appropriate, therefore, we must know what information is recoverable from the code and where the complexity of program recognition lies. I propose to study the limits of program recognition, both empirically and analytically. First, I will build an experimental system that performs recognition on realistic programs on the order of thousands of lines. This will allow me to characterize the information that can be recovered by this code-driven technique. Second, I will formally analyze the complexity of the recognition process. This will help determine how guidance can be applied most profitably to improve the efficiency of program recognition.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laborator

ANALOGICAL AND DEPENDENCY DIRECTED REASONING STRATEGIES FOR LARGE SYSTEMS EVOLUTION

The maintenance of large information systems involves continuous design modifications to designs in response to evolving business conditions or changing user requirements. Because of the complexity barrier associated with engineering such systems, changes can be ad hoc and prone to errors. Based on our observations of such a process in the oil industry, we believe that the systems maintenance activity would benefit greatly if the process knowledge reflecting the teleology of a design could be captured and used in order to reason about changing requirements, and to design parts of systems that might be âsimilarâ to existing ones. In this paper, we describe a partially implemented formalism called REMAP (REpresentation and MAintenance of Process knowledge) that accumulates design process knowledge to manage systems evolution. To accomplish this, REMAP acquires and maintains dependencies among the design decisions made during a prototyping process as well as the general domain-specific design rules on which such dependencies are based. This knowledge can then be applied to prototype refinement, systems maintenance, and the re-use of existing designs to construct âsimilarâ design fragments.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Revisiting the design intent concept in the context of mechanical CAD education

[EN] Design intent is generally understood simply as a CAD model¿s anticipated behavior when altered. However, this representation provides a simplified view of the model¿s construction and purpose, which may hinder its general understanding and future reusability. Our vision is that design intent communication may be improved by recognizing the multifaceted nature of design intent, and by instructing users to convey each facet of design intent through the better-fitted CAD resource. This paper reviews the current understanding of design intent and its relationship to design rationale and builds on the idea that communication of design intent conveyed via CAD models can be satisfied at three levels provided that specialized instruction is used to instruct users in selection of the most suitable level for each intent.Otey, J.; Company, P.; Contero, M.; Camba, J. (2018). Revisiting the design intent concept in the context of mechanical CAD education. Computer-Aided Design and Applications. 15(1):47-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/16864360.2017.1353733S476015

Analyzing decision making in software design

A model is given for the analysis of rationality in design decision making. We define a formal means for answering the query, To what extent has a designer, on a particular occasion, using an explicit definition of 'good', decided rationally?A decision rationality classification scheme is proposed. This scheme incorporates non-compensatory decision analysis techniques (dominance and conjunctive cut-off) as well as compensatory techniques (simple and hierarchical additive weighting, linear assignment, concordance, and displaced ideal). A formal definition of design decision is derived by extending the Lehman, Stenning, Turski transformational model of the software design process. Their view of artifact specification mappings between linguistic systems is extended to include the concomitant effect of the mapping on resource expenditure.A formal specification for decision control knowledge is defined. This representation is the union of that knowledge required to support the various decision analysis techniques. Presumed to operationalize a designer's goals, the knowledge representation scheme includes five levels:1. Each objective expresses some relevant design concern for an artifact and/or resource characteristic.2. Each criterion expresses some relevant decomposition of a superior objective or criterion.3. Each attribute expresses the bottom-most decomposition for a superior criterion. Each attribute may have a weight indicating its relative contribution to its superior criterion.4. For each attribute, a value function expresses the designer's preference ordering over observed performance for an attribute.5. For each attribute, an observation channel describes an observer independent metric over some specification (either resource or artifact) rendered in some linguistic system and a procedure for application of that metric.Our model is applied to problems in Structured Design and conceptual data modeling. We argue that a comprehensive design history must include not only the transformations applied but also the rationale used in deciding their application. This rationale must include decision control knowledge governing both artifact (product) and resource (process) facets of design decision making. The principal contribution of this work is that the opacity of the decision intensive aspects of design are reduced thereby taking a necessary step for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of software development