A case-based approach for elaboration of design requirements

The process of Case-Based Creative Design comprises: problem specification, problem elaboration, case retrieval, case adaptation, and verification. Problem specification and elaboration are crucial stages in the design process. Notwithstanding most of the current systems do not address this phase, assuming that the problem is well defined and complete, which is not a valid assumption for most of the situations. In this paper we propose a case-based method for problem elaboration. Old design episodes are used for problem specification and elaboration. Through the use of a graphical editor the user explores a set of alternative problem specifications. This helps the user in the problem specification task. If the problem still remains ill or incompletely defined, a problem elaboration method is used to complete the problem specification based on a library of cases and domain knowledge.