KITTEN: Knowledge Initiation and Transfer Tools for Experts and Novices

This paper gives a state-of-the-art report on the use of techniques based on personal construct psychology to automate knowledge engineering for expert systems. It presents the concept of knowledge support systems as interactive knowledge engineering tools, states the design criteria for such systems, and outlines the structure and key components of the KITTEN implementation. KITFEN includes tools for interactive repertory grid elicitation and entailment analysis that have been widely used for rapid prototyping of industrial expert systems. It also includes tools for text analysis, behavioral analysis and schema analysis, that offer complementary and alternative approaches to knowledge acquisition. The KIT/'EN implementation integrates these tools around a common database with utilities designed to give multiple perspectives on the knowledge base.