ABSTRACT
Case-based reasoning promises to provide a way to support design by reminding designers of previous experiences that can help with new situations. As designers, we learn to design by experiencing design situations. For example, generating a design for a bridge requires not only an understanding of the analysis of bridges, but exposure to examples of several bridge designs. We learn to analyze through the use of formal methods, but creating a new design requires previous experience, or at least, exposure to another’s design experiences. Case-based reasoning addresses this type of reminding and reuse of experience with computational models and guidelines for their implementation. In order to appreciate the role case-based reasoning can play in design, this chapter provides an overview of case-based reasoning as a computational model. In this chapter, case-based reasoning is presented simply, maybe even simplistically, in order to introduce the terminology used in the remainder of the book. For a more detailed presentation and discussion of case-based reasoning, the reader is referred to Kolodner (1993).
