Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Most non-trivial design tasks are under-specified, which makes evaluating designs subjective and problematic. In this paper, we address the evaluation criteria that are left implicit in problem specifications. W e propose that these criteria evaluate designs in terms of specific types of consistency and completeness. In particular, we divide consistency into constraint, representational, and goal consistency, and we decompose completeness into the specificity, depth, and breadth of a solution. These distinctions are useful because they organize criteria for evaluating designs. This model of evaluation is largely implemented in a program called JULIA that plans the presentation and menu of meals to satisfy multiple, interacting constraints.