Abstract Contemporary design problems are inherently complex and involve many highly coupled sub-tasks that require multiple designers to work together collaboratively. The designers' objectives are often in conflict and activities inconsistent. How to provide effective technology to support collaborative design has been a challenge for the research community. This paper presents an agent-supported framework, called ASCAD, for collaborative design. In ASCAD, a collaborative design team is viewed as a collection of design cells and each design cell is composed of a designer, a software agent, and a number of computer tools. By monitoring designer's design activities, the agent in ASCAD can help its designer coordinate with other designers through identifying needs for coordination, establishing links between designers, and providing suggestions for coordination decision-making. A brief description and discussion of an initial demo application of ASCAD is included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ASCAD framework and to illustrate future research directions.
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