Agent Based Modeling to Inform the Design of Multiuser Systems

Abstract

Decades have passed since the inception of the fi eld of Human-Computer Interaction. The emergence of the Internet has shifted researchers' attention from understanding how individuals interact with computers to understanding how individuals interact with one another using computer technologies. A wide range of systems designed for multiple users have been labeled as groupware, collaborative computing, multiuser applications, and more recently social computing technologies. Designing these types of system is more challenging than designing singleuser ones because other people and their behaviors are integral elements of the system as experienced by users (Grudin, 1994 ). The system itself, therefore, is nondeterministic and evolutionary because the experience of some users is partly the result of decisions that earlier users have made. Because the behavior of a multiuser system is not stable until a critical mass of users has developed a routine way of using it, it is diffi cult to predict how groups of users will respond to a particular design before the stable state is reached. As a result, interactive design and evaluation cycle, perhaps the most successful HCI technique for system design, is insuffi cient for the design of multiuser applications.Consider the design of an online health support group like breastcancer.org and the decision about whether to employ moderators who ensure group members spend their time discussing cancer-related topics, channel off-topic content to sub-forums, or prevent users from posting advertisements. A member's decision to participate in

Groupware 4.0: Avanços e Desafios da Computação Social

“…O comportamento de um sistema multiusuário é muito variável, e difícil de prever até que um grupo suficientemente grande de usuários tenha desenvolvido rotinas de uso. A modelagem baseada em agentes [Ren and Kraut 2014] é uma forma de criar simulações computacionais que viabiliza a criação, análise e experimentação de modelos de agentes que interagem com um ambiente e uns com os outros [Gilbert 2008]. Simulações são usadas há muito tempo para entender comportamentos sociais.…”

“…Ren [Ren and Kraut 2014] apresenta um guia de 7 passos para realização de pesquisas usando modelagem baseada em agentes; para os que quiserem se aprofundar, recomendamos a leitura. Uma outra utilização de agentes em sistemas colaborativos é sua adoção como assistentes inteligentes para mediar o trabalho em grupo.…”

How individual behaviors drive inequality in online community sizes: an agent-based simulation

“…eories like critical mass theory [33] and complex contagion [13] were developed with the help of agent-based simulations and have been in uential in social computing research [39,42]. Despite this history of bene ting from ABS, a strong t with social computing research questions, and calls for use from prominent scholars [40], agent-based simulations remain extremely rare in HCI and social computing.…”

Legitimate Peripheral Participation and Value Creation in Online Knowledge Sharing Communities

“…Agent-based modeling is a computational methodology that enables one to model complex systems [26,27]. Agent-based models are composed of interacting agents: computational entities that have properties and rules of behavior [31].…”

“…There are two main ways in which agent-based modeling can be used in human-computer interaction research: First, to advance theories related to multiuser systems and second, to inform the design of these systems as well as interventions, policies, and practices surrounding them. The former corresponds to the use of agent-based modeling to explain mechanisms, processes, or conditions that lead to certain behaviors and the latter corresponds to the use of agent-based modeling to prescribe actions to obtain desired outcomes [26] (p. 398).…”