One way of devising domain-specific design methods is by reconstructing
an example in the domain using the target method; then generalising the
design structures to cover a class of designs in the domain and then building
an environment in which these structures may more easily be re-applied
to new problems. TeMS (Techniques-based Model Synthesiser) is a result
of using that approach with animal population dynamics models as the domain
and Prolog Programming Techniques as the target method. TeMS supports model
construction by automatically synthesising models from users' specifications.
In order to gauge how well TeMS might support people in modelling,
I have carried out an user evaluation of the tool using subjects from the
ecological modelling community.In this talk I will give an overview of
the project and describe in more detail the evaluation stage and some results
from it.