AN INTELLIGENT ASSISTANT FOR CONCEPTUAL DESIGN Informed Search Using a Mapping of Abstract Qualities to Physical Form

In early stages of design, the language used is often very abstract. In architectural design, for example, architects and their clients use experiential terms such as “private” or “open” to describe spaces. The Architect’s Collaborator (TAC) is a prototype design assistant that supports iterative design refinement using abstract, experiential terms. TAC explores the space of possible designs in search of solutions satisfying specified abstract goals by employing a strategy we call dependency-directed redesign: It evaluates a design with respect to a set of goals, uses an explanation of the evaluation to guide proposal and refinement of design repair suggestions, then carries out the repair suggestions to create new designs.