SLIDE 1
Agents and GUIs from Task Models
Jacob Eisenstein
University of Southern California
Charles Rich
Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs
Exploiting Task Models
The same task model?
Task Model Agent Graphical User Interface
Agents and GUIs from Task Models Jacob Eisenstein University of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Agents and GUIs from Task Models Jacob Eisenstein University of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Agents and GUIs from Task Models Jacob Eisenstein University of Southern California Charles Rich Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs Exploiting Task Models Agent Collaborative Interface Agent Task Model Graphical Model-based GUI Design
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Task Models
Task models describe the steps required to accomplish
the user’s goals.
– User-centered – Formal – Declarative
Task elicitation is a separate problem
– U-Tel (Tam et al. 1998) – ConcurTaskTrees (Paterno & Mancini 1999) – Learning by Example/Demonstration (Garland K-CAP 01)
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A Simple Task Model
Login
Enter Address Enter Name Enter Password Initiate Login
FTP
Hierarchical breakdown Parameters, bindings, ordering constraints
– E.g. Enter name precedes Initiate Login
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Collaborative Interface Agents
Collagen is a tool for building task-aware
collaborative interface agents
A spectrum of task-based collaborative support
– Tutoring – Intelligent assistance
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A Collagen Agent in Action
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Collaborative Agent Architecture
Task Model
Collagen
Agent Application
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Connecting Agents to Applications
Connecting agents to applications is
hard
– (Lieberman 1998)
Agents require access to the
application internals
– Agent must be able to affect the
application
– Agent must know what the user has done
Agent
?
Application
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The Agent Interface
Connects the agent with the
application
Agent interfaces are hard to write
– Requires understanding of both agent
and application
– Must convert between the task model
and GUI events
Agent Agent Interface Application
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Enter Task-Centered UI Design!
Task-centered UI design
– Build the UI through formal modeling – Begin the design process with a task model
GUI Renderer GUI Editor
GUI Implementation Task Model GUI Spec Backend Application Task-GUI Mapping
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The Task-GUI Mapping
A formal description of the relationship between tasks
and UI objects / events.
Everything you need to create an agent interface! Automatically produce the agent interface code from:
– Task model – UI specification – Task-GUI mapping
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GUI Renderer VAMPIRE
GUI Implementation GUI Spec Backend Task-GUI Mapping Agent Interface
BATS
Task Model
Collagen
Agent Application
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The VAMPIRE GUI editor
Tool support for task-centered UI design Very similar to conventional UI design
environments
– E.g. Visual Studio, JBuilder
Constructs models interactively while UI is
designed
Produces an UI specification in UIML
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Using the Task-GUI Mapping
BATS: Bridging Agents, Tasks, and Software
VAMPIRE
GUI Spec Task-GUI Mapping Agent Interface
BATS
Task Model
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GUI Renderer VAMPIRE
GUI Implementation GUI Spec Backend Task-GUI Mapping Agent Interface
BATS
Task Model
Collagen
Agent Application
Demo time!
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Contribution
Connecting agents to applications is hard Solution: leverage a shared task model
– Generic agent middleware – Task-centered GUI design – Double the return on your investment
Agent integration “for free”
– You create task model – You use task-centered GUI design tool – We do the rest
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Future Work
Richer task models
– Which tasks are most important or most difficult? – Who has permission to perform each task? – Who knows how to perform each task?
Design methodology for combining GUIs and
collaborative agents using task models
– Which functions allocated to GUI vs. agent?