Human-centered development of knowledge-based systems

Todays knowledge-based systems often are not useful to handle complex tasks. The problems concern the user's qualification, the quality of work and the quality of products. Some of them are caused by technic-oriented decisions during the development of the systems. The paper presents an approach to transform new human-oriented concepts as "open work environments", "working resources", and "tools" into a framework for knowledge-based system design. The basic idea in this approach is the development of a model in the sense of an informal description of the domain and the course of actions. The modelling process helps to find an adequate distribution of tasks and functions between the user and the system. It takes into account specific requirements of individual methods of working and cooperative work. During the modelling process the adequacy of various modes of use have to be examined. These are process- oriented strategies, the use of the system as medium to obtain or to store backgrou nd information, exploring the systems state, and testing hypothesis to integrate the users ideas of solutions as well as modification facilities concerning the contents of the knowledge base and the working process.