If the letter "D" in the acronym, CAD is ever to mean more than "Drafting" to structural engineers, improvements to interactive design capabilities are necessary. Since designers like what they do, interfaces need to show how they can empower designers to design even better. More specifically, human-computer interaction strategies need to be formulated to encourage designers to explore spaces of possible designs so that they can introduce their interpretation of contextual conditions. Designers wish to provide input at any stage and therefore, systems must provide, at any time, support for guiding and evaluating design decisions. This paper discusses strategies for developing interactive design systems. Interactive design is accomplished using methods that fall into the following three categories: user interpretation, active design support and design assessment. Two systems recently developed at EPFL are used to illustrate how such methods can be implemented. Finally, experiences related to two import ant supporting technologies, 3-D visualisation and web communication, are discussed.

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