Agent-based support for interactive search in conceptual software engineering design

While recent attempts to search a conceptual software engineering design search space with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have yielded promising results, the practical application of such search-based techniques remains to be addressed. This paper reports initial findings of the application of software agents in support of an interactive, user-centered conceptual software design scenario. The supporting role of a number of single responsibility agents is described and results for a case study indicate that the application of such agents to search-based design scenarios provides efficient, high performance and effective support. The notion of interactive, joint human-computer activity appears to map well to conceptual software design scenarios: focus on superior design concepts and thence to useful and interesting designs provides a natural and effective way of narrowing the population based search. In addition, agents and the human designer appear to interact as cooperative â...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: GECCO
• Authors: Christopher L. Simons, Ian C. Parmee
• Keywords: Conceptual Software Design, Design Scenarios, Evolutionary Algorithms, GECCO 2008, Optimization