Daily Note: Interaction design in Human-Agent Systems

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “How might people interact with agents.”

Donald A. Norman. 1994. How might people interact with agents. Commun. ACM 37, 7 (July 1994), 68–71. https://doi.org/10.1145/176789.176796

  1. User Control and Trust
    • Elements of control
      • Systems must ensure users are in command of their operations
    • Privacy
      • Integral to trust
      • Maintaining confidentiality is a subset of trust
    • Providing accurate expectations
      • Minimize false hopes by aligning system capabilities with user expectations
    • Conceptual model transparency
      • Reveal underlying operations to help users understand system actions
  2. Managing Human-Agent Interaction
    • Removing complexity
      • Simplify the interactions while making actions traceable when needed
    • Feedback customization
      • Allow users to adjust the form and level of feedback
    • Contextual understanding
      • Provide updates that are comprehensible and reassuring
  3. Safeguards and Constraints
    • Runaway computation prevention
      • Integrated mechanisms to keep systems within safe operational bounds
    • Undo capabilities
      • Ensure actions can be traced and reversed when required
    • Explicit permissions
      • Avoid unwanted or expensive operations without user consent
  4. Autonomy and Technical Challenges of Agents
    • Agent independence
      • Agents are often created independently, leading to potential conflicts
    • Synchronization issues
      • Address contradictory actions and asynchronous coordination
    • Distributed environments
      • Manage complexities in networks, processors, and spatiotemporal relations
  5. Building Social Acceptability
    • Trust through transparency
      • Provide consistent updates on agent actions and system state
    • User reassurance
      • Ensure users can verify actions and maintain privacy
    • Reliability and acceptance
      • As system reliability improves, user trust and comfort will grow
  6. Designing Effective Communication
    • System image
      • Present capabilities and actions through an appropriate conceptual model
    • Feedback channels
      • Use graphics, sound, and verbal messages to convey updates
    • Agent advice and information
      • Clearly communicate recommendations and outcomes
  7. Temporal and Spatial Considerations
    • Temporal coordination
      • Address asynchronous operations across distributed environments
    • Impact on other activities
      • Ensure agents act in harmony with unrelated systems and processes