COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY OF DESIGN PROBLEM

Algorithm for design problem solving is np-complete

Abstract

It is shown that design can be formulated as satisfiability problem solving, or SAT, if we regard design as a purposive activity to solve a problem. Some characteristics of design computation are disccued on the basis of Cook's Theorem saying that SAT is NP-complete problem and the characteristics of NP-complete problem. It is possible to determine whether a certain design product is actually a solution of a design problem or not in polynomial time. This implies that generate and test is one of pragmatic approaches to solve a design problem if the computational complexity of the algorithm of generating a design product is in the class of pronominal time. It is an important task for design computing study to find such a generation algorithm and to construct a computational model of design thinking where promising design products are created.