CO-SOLVE: architecture for design and implementation of associate systems

Developers of associate systems, systems which share the workload of problem-solving with their human partners, must deal with the complexities of collaborative human-computer problem-solving. This paper introduces an architecture for design and implementation of associate systems, CO-SOLVE, which provides the important capabilities of attention synchronization and collaborative alternatives exploration. Attention synchronization is the capability of the system to synchronize its focus of attention to the user´s focus of attention. Collaborative alternatives exploration is the support of interactive searches of complex solution spaces to find high-quality solutions. A proof-of-concept prototype implementation of CO-SOLVE, SEDAR, was constructed for the domain of flat and low-slope roof design for commercial buildings. An early evaluation of the collaborative alternatives exploration portion of SEDAR showed that SEDAR helped experienced architects reduce the amount of time spent developing solutions while increasing the number of alternatives searched in the solution space