Early work on the NONLIN and O-Plan projects indicated a need for a defined methodology which would guide users performing various roles in the acquisition and analysis of domain requirements for planning. This work included links to a requirement analysis methodology, CORE (COntrolled Requirements Expression) , tool support via an intelligent assistant as part of the Task Formalism (TF) Workstation and an initial collection of guidelines and checklists to aid in using the TF domain description language. This paper describes work underway to follow-on from this past research and to infuse it with knowledge gained from recent research related to planning domain development, knowledge modelling, design rationale and ontological and requirements engineering. Introduction The activities involved in discovering, engineering, documenting, and maintaining a set of domain constructs for most AI planning-based projects can be considered ad hoc and disorganised, at best. The current sources for...

Abstract. I-X is a research programme (Tate, 2000b) with a number of different aspects intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a design, physical entity or plan- i.e. it supports cooperative synthesis tasks. The I-X approach involves the use of shared models for task-directed cooperation between human and computer agents who are jointly exploring (via some, perhaps dynamically determined, process) a range of alternative options for the synthesis of an artifact such as a design or a plan (termed a product).

This paper describes a design space analysis approach towards a "complete" planning solution. A complete solution is defined as one containing the resultant plan, the context in which it applies, and the argument structure that justifies it. The focus in this paper is on defining and communicating the argument structure component. A perspective of a plan as a specialised type of design and planning as a specialised form of design activity is used. In doing so, research is drawn upon from the design rationale community for generating an explanation of a designed artifact. In particular, the method of generating a design space which represents the location of the plan within the space of possible plan elaborations is adopted. An initial implementation, Nonlin+DR, is described and its potential benefits to stand-alone and mixed-initiative planning is discussed. Introduction The traditional solution produced by an artificial intelligence planning system is a set of actions and ordering co...

I-X is a research programme intended to create a well-founded approach to allow humans and computer systems to cooperate in the creation or modification of some product such as a design, physical entity or plan -- i.e. it supports mixedinitiative synthesis tasks. The I-X mixed-initiative approach involves the use of shared models for task-orientated communication between human and computer agents who are jointly exploring (via some process) a range of alternative options for the synthesis of an artifact such as a design, configuration or plan (termed a process product).

I-X Process Panels are used to support users who are carrying out processes and responding to events in a cooperative working environment. The panels support the tracking of personal or group issues, the planning and execution of activities and the checking of constraints. Panels can be connected to other panels, and also to a range of services, agents and other cooperative working support tools to form part of a framework for activity and process support in an organization. The dynamically changing context in which a user operates is reflected in the options presented. Actual usage indicated the value of adopting an "instant messaging" style of use. An augmented activity-orientated "intelligible messaging" approach is taken in which artificial intelligence planning technology can be deployed in a natural way.