Integrated design as a cooperative problem solving activity

The authors present integrated design as an improved design method involving cooperative problem-solving. Integrated design takes advantage of commonly occurring task decompositions in design problems and encourages group problem-solving rather than sequential problem-solving. The cooperative problem-solving approach is characterized by dynamic cooperation between knowledge sources with overlapping expertise working in parallel to solve the design problem. Each knowledge source can consist of human and machine-based experts with similar expertise working closely together. The interactions of the resulting community of experts can be described as task sharing, information sharing, and constraint resolution. The overall goal of integrated design through cooperative problem solving is to produce optimized designs more efficiently and effectively and to prevent costly redesign iterations