Supporting conflict resolution in cooperative design systems

Complex modern-day artifacts are designed cooperatively by groups of experts, each with their own areas of expertise. The interaction of such experts inevitably involves conflict. This paper presents an implemented computational model, based on studies of human cooperative design, for supporting the resolution of such conflicts. This model is based centrally on the insights that general conflict resolution expertise exists separately from domain-level design expertise, and that this expertise can be instantiated in the context of particular conflicts into specific advice for resolving those conflicts. Conflict resolution expertise consists of a taxonomy of design conflict classes in addition to associated general advice suitable for resolving conflicts in these classes. The abstract nature of conflict resolution expertise makes it applicable to a wide variety of design domains. This paper describes this conflict resolution model and provides examples of its operation from an implemented cooperative design system for local area network design that uses machinebased design agents. How this model is being extended to support and learn from collaboration of human design agents is also discussed. * This paper appears in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Special Issue on Distributed Artificial Intelligence. Volume 21, Number 6, December 1991.