Information and interaction requirements for software tools supporting analogical design

ed. Furthermore, in order to develop tools that integrate with the other systems that designers use, providing connectivity is important. Better understanding the requirement for connectivity requires research into the variety of existing tools, systems and processes that are relevant to analogical design and research into the real world contexts in which those tools are used and in which analogical design takes place. In order to investigate their expectations, past experiences of designers who have expertise in analogical design should be consulted to understand their information and interaction needs, while accessing source analogues and mapping and transferring from source analogues to the target solution. Identifying these criteria is necessary both for developing future tools and also for evaluating them. This would yield guidance on the standards, conventions and terminology that should be adopted within and across tools. Analogical design support tools can serve designers in some of the most difficult challenges in design: the identification of principles and precedents that are related to (however distantly) the design task under consideration. For developers striving to provide such tools there are a number of activities that must be undertaken. They must generate a broad and detailed catalogue of possible sources for designers to draw from; they must determine how that information should be structured and presented; they must also implement