ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Representational Epistemic (REEP) approach to understanding and designing representations for complex problem domains. It considers the challenges to the design of effective representations for complex problems by discussing the various ways in which a problem domain may be complex. The chapter discusses the advantages of representations designed using the REEP approach and specifically addresses how these benefits can be used to tackle the challenges of complex problem solving. It is claimed that representations created to directly encode the system of knowledge that underpins the problem-solving domain will provide a whole range of small- and large-scale benefits for cognition and complex problem solving. Deciding what information and knowledge to make explicit and how to coherently structure the presentation are major challenges of the designer of representations. The established theory that problem solving is a process of heuristic search through a problem space identifies ways in which problem solving may vary in complexity.
