That's a pretty good idea, sure. I wouldn't do it based on global knowledge, though, simply to adhere to the "no meta advantages" rule, even if you could look up missing ones in a spreadsheet. At some point I'll do a mockup of this and see how it might work.
The engine could also pull up the full window if we wanted to.
Edit: Now that I think of it, technically you start the game with knowledge of all non-prototype part data, and almost no other robots carry prototypes, so the "having seen before" isn't really an issue. You should always get that info.