Developing Interaction Capabilities in Knowledge- Based Systems via Design Patterns

The need for interaction between knowledge -based systems (KBS) and the user has increased, mainly, to enhance the acceptability of the reasoning process and of the solutions proposed by the KBS. Based on this need, we p ropose Design Patterns to facilitate the development of interaction characteristics in KBSs. Particularly, we define a design pattern to provide explanation, since we consider that this form of interaction is usually required in KBSs. This pattern is composed of a class responsible for defining the explanation to be given to the user, and of a class that represents the reasoning steps. In this paper, we also describe how this design pattern can be used for the development of a KBS using the Unified Problem-Solving Method Development Language (UPML). We exemplify the use of the design pattern for explanation and of the UPML framework in the development of a KBS in a Multi-Agent Application.