Detecting and resolving conflicts among cooperating human and machine-based design agents

The design of complex artifacts is fundamentally a cooperative process, with the detection and resolution of conflicts between design agents playing a central role. Effective tools for supporting the conflict management process, however, are still lacking. These tools, in general, do not support task-level interaction or encode significant expertise about how to detect and resolve conflicts. This paper described an implemented computer-based system called DCSS (the Design Collaboration Support System) for supporting conflict detection and resolution among cooperating human and machine-based design agents that avoid these limitations. Design agents describe their design actions and rationale to DCSS in terms of a task-level model of the cooperative design process; human designers use a direct-manipulation graphical interface for this purpose. DCSS uses a body of domain-independent expertise to help the agents detect and resolve conflicts among them. The system has been used successfully by human designers to design Local Area Networks in cooperation with other human and machine-based designers. This paper described DCSSs underlying model and implementation, gives examples of its operation, and evaluates its strengths, weaknesses and potential for future growth.