Critique: Dominic
Dixon, Howe, Cohen, Simmons ^*

      The paper flowed very nicely, starting with a few words about what design actually is and what processes can be / had been described. This was followed by defining the terms they intended to use. It made things easy to follow, although the dependency table was missing from the problem formulation list. Since it couldn't have been my fault, the initial confusion I experienced from the dependency list being static must have been due to the dependency table not being introduced in the same list.

      In the description of Dominic's architecture there is an inference engine. I found it odd that there was no mention of rules. Granted the dependencies, dependency list and table, performance satisfaction scales and constraint equations can be viewed as a form of rules. The authors identify two other systems as performing better than Dominic. This is most likely due to Dominic's lack of a way to represent domain specific knowledge relevant to the design approach. DPMED seems to remedy this slightly, although its main concern is not with domain independence.

      Despite being in the middle, chronologically, of this week's group of readings, this paper serves very well as an introduction to the concept of redesign. This seems to be due to Dominic resembling an optimization tool more than a design tool. This restricted problem space leaves room to define the concept of design goals (problem specification parameters), output of the design tool (design variables), analysis (performance parameters), assessment (performance satisfaction scales), etc.

      Many of the problems of Dominic manifest themselves in DPMED, including those related to the hill-climbing approach.

      It seems very inflexible to have the best value on a performance satisfaction scale be the mean value of the allowed range. An approach allowing equations representing a scale or sections thereof might overcome this limitation.

      Overall, I wasn't impressed with Dominic's progress in achieving domain independence. The domains explored seemed to be all slight specializations on the general mechanical design domain. It could be that I studied DPMED in depth before Dominic. DPMED came about two years later and with the knowledge gained from work done with Dominic I & II. This paper does present the role of iteration in the design process and basic concepts well.