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Augmenting interaction and cognition using agent architectures and technology inspired by psychology and social worlds

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Abstract

Intelligent agents can play a pivotal role in providing both software systems and augmented interfaces, to individual users from all walks of life, to utilise the Internet 24 h a day, 7 days a week (24×7), including interaction with other users, over both wireless and broadband infrastructures. However, traditional approaches to user modelling are not adequate for this purpose, as they mainly account for a generic, approximate, idealised user. New user models are therefore required to be adaptable for each individual and flexible enough to represent the diversity of all users using information technology. Such models should be able to cover all aspects of an individual’s life—those aspects of most interest to the individual user themselves. This paper describes a novel intelligent agent architecture and methodology both called ShadowBoard, based on a complex user model drawn from analytical psychology. An equally novel software tool, called the DigitalFriend based on ShadowBoard, is also introduced. This paper illustrates how aspects of user cognition can be outsourced, using, for example, an internationalised book price quoting agent. The Locales Framework from Computer Supported Co-operative Work is then used to understand the problematic aspects of interaction involved in complex social spaces, identifying specific needs for technology intervention in such social spaces, and to understand how interactions amongst mobile users with different abilities might be technically assisted in such spaces. In this context, the single user-centred multi-agent technology demonstrated in the DigitalFriend is adapted to a multi-user system dubbed ShadowPlaces. The aim of ShadowPlaces is to outsource some of the interaction necessary, for a group of mobile individuals with different abilities to interact cooperatively and effectively in a social world, supported by wireless networks and backed by broadband Internet services. An overview of the user model, the architecture and methodology (ShadowBoard) and the resulting software tool (the DigitalFriend) is presented, and progress on ShadowPlaces—the multi-user version—is outlined.

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Notes

  1. Usually, this program executes behind the scenes, but the MindProbe button gives the end-user/developer a way of checking what CoLoG program is built by the software and whether it works correctly.

  2. In CoLoG, the terms starting with an uppercase character are variables, while those starting with lowercase are instances. Predicates—complex term names which precede an open bracket—also start with lowercase characters. The rule would be similar in the Prolog language and its derivatives.

  3. Such SMS web services currently exist for many countries, but the user typically needs to be a paying subscriber to access them.

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Acknowledgements

Much of this research has now been applied in the realisation of the software tool DigitalFriend V1.0. It is a product of a development effort titled The Digital Self Project, an open source project funded by a Telstra Broadband Fund Development Grant, provided by Telstra Ltd, Australia. The DigitalFriend product is the first software tool from the effort to become available for public use, and can be downloaded from www.DigitalFriend.org

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interaction Design Lab, Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, 111 Barry St, Carlton, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Steve Goschnick & Connor Graham

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  1. Steve Goschnick
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  2. Connor Graham
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Correspondence to Steve Goschnick.

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Goschnick, S., Graham, C. Augmenting interaction and cognition using agent architectures and technology inspired by psychology and social worlds. Univ Access Inf Soc 4, 204–222 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-005-0012-x

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