| authors |
McCall, Raymond Joseph |
| year |
1978 |
| title |
On the structure and use of issue systems in design |
| source |
University of California, Berkeley |
| summary |
The purpose of this dissertation is to explain and justify the concept of issue serving-systems as a new paradigm for descriptive and normative models of design processes. This paradigm is based in general on Horst Rittel's "Argumentative Planning Paradigm" and in particular on Rittel's "Issue-Based Information System" --IBIS-- method. Like IBIS, the issue serving-system concept views design as consisting of the raising and answering of various questions, called issues. The addition of the issue serving-system concept to IBIS is the claim that the serving relationship is the main means for structuring issues into a system for design. That relationship is the one in which an issue A serves an issue B, by which it is meant that the answering of A is useful in deriving the answer to B. Collections of issues structured by this relationship are labelled "issue serving-systems." In the dissertation it is explained that an issue servingsystem has a quasi-hierarchical structure and has as its function the answering of a P!L issue, i.e., an issue of the form, "What should this plan be." Two projects are undertaken in order to demonstrate the normative significance of the issue serving-system concept. The first is to show that the concept forms the basis of a variety of techniques for mechanical (algorithmic) generation of issues and answers. The second is to show how the concept provides criteria for determining which issues should be dealt with and in what order. In particular, it is argued that a topdown breadth-first order of raising issues is best. These conclusions are incorporated into procedures for design, and two applications of these procedures are described. One application involves use of an interactive computer program written by the author. The other involves a non-computerized version of the method. |
| series |
thesis:PhD |
| references |
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| last changed |
2003/02/12 22:37 |
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