This project is concerned with problems inherent in the informal specification of design. Its task is to develop a domain independent, generic knowledge-based requirement elicitation tool for design, called DDSC (Dynamic Design Specification with Chunking). Capturing design requirements is usually the task of knowledge engineers and is often done by post hoc knowledge acquisition, which in general is inadequate and difficult. In this approach however, design specification is a dynamic process evolving interactively. The elicitation process is based on the structure of human cognition through the use of recognized cognitive categories. DDSC takes as input an initial, informal requirement specification for a design object, as well as an extended generic ontology of the design process, and generates a complete, unambiguous, consistent, and implementable requirement specification of the desired design object. It does so by ewalkingn the Designer and the User Agents through the design process. During this ewalk-through,n requirements are chunked down with the help of Chunking Agents into implementable bits. DDSC is a participatory design tool which differs from any existing generic tool. Its application will greatly contribute to minimizing the huge gap which exists between informal specification and design implementation.
