Assessing Design Activity in Complex CMOS Circuit Design.

This report characterizes human problem solving in digital circuit design. Protocols of 11 different designers with varying degrees of training were analyzed by identifying the designers' problem solving strategies and discussing activity patterns that differentiate the designers. These methods are proposed as a tentative basis for assessing expertise in digital design. Throughout, it is argued that a comprehensive model of human design should integrate a variety of strategies, which until now have been proposed as individually sufficient models of human design problem solving. An automated tool for design and its assessment is described. This computerized tool will have a problem-description browsing tool, a high-level formalization and simulation tool, and circuit-diagram drawing and circuit-simulating tools. An appendix contains an example of the design process with four tables, one figure, and a distribution list. (Contains 20 references.) (Author/SLD)