WHAT'S IN A DIAGRAM THAT A COMPUTER SHOULD UNDERSTAND?

This paper reports on an experiment to test the feasibility of using a diagramming tool to access an architectural knowledge base. Our hypothesis is that designers only use a small set o conventional elements to make diagrams of architect concepts. If this true, then a scheme for retrieving information from computer knowledge bases using diagrams would work. Therefore we asked designers to make diagrams from texts, to interpret'. diagrams into texts, to pair diagrams and texts, and to comment on existing pars from the case base. We found from the experiment that common features are shared between different designers' diagrams and texts.