Libra: a high fidelity knowledge-based system for recommending scheduling programs

Abstract

Contemporary knowledge systems are usually neither easy to use or understand. We propose a new class of knowledge systems, which we call high fidelity systems, that use representations and processes that closely resemble the objects and tasks with which people are already familiar. To illustrate the concept of high fidelity, we describe Libra, one such system for recommending scheduling programs. Our initial experience with Libra and its usage suggests that high fidelity not only enhances the user acceptability of knowledge-based systems, but it also facilities high speed design and implementation. We chose to replicate the knowledge in Libra because it is already published, and because we wanted to show that a Libra user can have an interface similar to the diagrams drawn in the journal paper. The latter was used to describe the knowledge-based framework for selecting scheduling systems. If we can replicate them in the user interface, we would have successfully created a high fidelity system - that is, the Libra user interface would be at least as able to communicate the framework to the user as the journal paper. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.