Concept Formation from Design Cases: Why Reusing Experience and Why Not

This paper describes an environment that supports novice information systems designers in initial concept formation by organising design 'cases' in evolving networks, automatically clustered by a neural agent to suggest generalisations of design patterns. Flexible reframing of the cases also supports creativity by uncovering less obvious but relevant design concepts. If the responsibility of linking related design cases is distributed to a population of learners who contribute their cases and tentative generalisations, genetic techniques can be applied to sustain the evolution of the base of cases towards ontological forms that better guide and constrain the case reuse process, thus supporting knowledge transfer. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.