CCAD: A paradigm for human-computer cooperation in design

Cooperative computer-aided design (CCAD) is a paradigm for combining the strengths of manual and automated design activity. The goal of CCAD is to support exploratory design, while keeping the user central to the design activity. In the CCAD paradigm, the user expresses initial design decisions in the form of a partial design and a set of properties that the final design must have. The system then generates alternative partial developments of the initial design subject to a "language" of valid designs. It structures the results in a spatial framework through which the user moves to explore the alternatives. The user selects the most promising partial design, refines it manually, and then requests further automatic development. This process continues until the design is complete. Thus, CCAD supports the exploratory nature of creative design activity. The user makes critical decisions, while the system generates alternatives and presents them to the user for browsing.<>