PROCESS TRACING AS A METHOD FOR INITIAL KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION.

To streamline the initial stages of expert system building, more emphasis must be placed on improving the efficiency of initial knowledge acquisition. Process tracing is a method that allows the knowledge engineer to gather information about the decision processes used by domain experts. Because this method involves the use of protocol analysis, it avoids some of the communication problems that plague traditional inverviewing approaches. Process training serves to incorporate the domain expert's natural decision strategies in the initial structuring of knowledge. It reduces the amount of time required of the domain expert and assists the knowledge engineer by providing a framework for directing subsequent knowledge-engineer/domain-expert interactions.