Innovative Design Systems: Where Are We, and Where Do We Go from Here

Abstract

This report reviews the state of the art in systems that innovate. The review concentrates more on the techniques used in these systems rather than what the system actually did. This report reviews some of the important issues for DA systems that work in domains requiring non-routine and innovative approaches to problem solving. This part of the report covers issues such as analogy & metaphor, exploration & discovery and creativity. Before talking about tools and techniques, we will first try and characterize innovative designs. Earlier definitions of innovative design have tended to finess over details. For example, innovative design has been defined as any design that is: new or different or elegant or uses new ideas or is an improvement over its peers. Such a definition is correct, but it does not tell us how to measure 'newness'. How new is something? In this section we shed a little more light on the problem of trying to distinguish between innovative and routine design. No definition will ever be complete or accurate, but something is better than nothing. The real purpose of trying to define innovative design is to try and identify the characteristics of innovative design. With a list of such characteristics we can better focus our research efforts. If DA systems that emulate some of the characteristics of innovative design can be built, then, such systems can be said to have some form of innovative behavior. Keywords: Computer programming.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 12, 1990
Accession Number
ADA222586

Entities

People

  • D. Navinchandra

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Boundaries
  • Civil Engineering
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Construction
  • Control Theory
  • Debugging
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Mechanics
  • Psychology
  • Robots

Readers

  • Systems Analysis and Design