is it good?

i have an important basic question for my research:

what is an evolutionary algorithm good for, in design realm?

a preliminary answer is:

1. for rather restricted and more or less well-defined (or rather reduced to possible restricted definitions?) optimization problems (and that's a very popular subject nowadays, especially in performance based environmental design)

2. and for not so restricted exploration in wicked design problems (even you keep asking: is this problem solving? is there a problem here? am i constantly constructing the problem during design? is this design act synonymous with the definition of itself? is this exploration? is here a solution space? solution to what? space in where?) (and this is a popular thread too, in generative art and design circles..)

both result from evolutionary computation's stochastic character; for the former, stochastic search, for the latter an exploration through alternatives...