Title
Designing Comprehensible Self-Organising Systems
Abstract
Self-organising systems are a popular engineering concept for designing decentralised autonomic computing systems. They are able to find solutions in complex and versatile problem domains, but as they capture more complexity in their own design, they are becoming less and less comprehensible to their users (be they humans or intelligent agents). We describe a design challenge that relates to usability theory in general and in particular resembles an observation made by Phoebe Senger, who noted that software agents tend to become incomprehensible in their behaviour as they grow more complex. In the manifestation of self-organising systems, the problem is more urgent (since we find ourselves using them more and more) and harder to solve at the same time (since these systems are not centrally controlled). We describe the problem domain and propose three system properties that could be used as quality indicators in this regard: Stability, Learn ability and Engage ability. We demonstrate their usage in a simple model of dynamic pricing markets (e.g. the electricity domain) and evaluate them in different ways.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1109/SASO.2010.18
SASO
Keywords
Field
DocType
different way,own design,designing comprehensible self-organising systems,versatile problem domain,design challenge,self-organising system,decentralised autonomic computing system,phoebe senger,electricity domain,engage ability,problem domain,software agents,optimization,self organization,system analysis and design,user centered design,artificial intelligence,autonomic computing,intelligent agent,open systems,software agent,games,artificial intelligent,correlation,control system
Autonomic computing,Intelligent agent,Structured systems analysis and design method,Problem domain,Computer science,Usability,Software agent,Human–computer interaction,Artificial intelligence,Open system (systems theory),User-centered design,Distributed computing
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.34
6
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nicolas Höning1103.47
Han La Poutré224033.07