ing with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept, ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or permissions@acm.org. Which GOMS? p. 2 2 Keywords: GOMS, cognitive modeling, usability engineering ABSTRACT Since the seminal Card, Moran, & Newell (1983) book, The psychology of human-computer interaction, the GOMS model has been one of the few widely known theoretical concepts in human-computer interaction. This concept has spawned much research to verify and extend the original work and has been used in real-world design and evaluation situations. This paper synthesizes the previous work on GOMS to provide an integrated view of GOMS models and how they can be used in design. We briefly describe the major variants of GOMS that have matured sufficiently to be used in actual design. We then provide guidance to practitioners about which GOMS var...

Since the seminal Card, Moran, & Newell (1983) book, The psychology of human-computer interaction, the concept of the GOMS model has been one of the few widely known theoretical concepts in human-computer interaction. This concept has spawned much research to verify and extend the original concept and has been used in real-world design and evaluation situations. The original presentation of the GOMS concept left substantial room for interpretation and subsequent researchers and practitioners have applied the idea in a variety of ways. While this variety shows that the GOMS concept is fruitful, there is some confusion about the GOMS concept and the various approaches that share this label yet appear to be radically different. This paper synthesizes the previous work on GOMS to provide an integrated view of GOMS models and how they can be used in design. The major variants of GOMS that have matured sufficiently to be used in real-world design and evaluation situations are described and r...

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Bounded rationality has been an important theme throughout the history of the theory of organizations, because it explains the sharing of information processing tasks and the existence of administrative staffs that coordinate large organizations. This article broadly surveys the theories of organizations that model such bounded rationality and decentralized information processing.

We investigate the concept of artificial societies and identify a number of separate classes of such societies. These are compared in terms of openness, flexibility, stability, and trustfulness. The two most obvious types of artificial societies are the open societies, where there are no restrictions for joining the society, and the closed societies, where it is impossible for an "external agent" to join the society. We argue that whereas open societies supports openness and flexibility, closed societies support stability and trustfulness.

This paper presents and evaluates a decision making framework that enables autonomous agents to dynamically select the mechanism they employ in order to coordinate their inter-related activities. Adopting this framework means coordination mechanisms move from the realm of something that is imposed upon the system at design time, to something that the agents select at run-time in order to fit their prevailing circumstances and their current coordination needs. Using this framework, agents make informed choices about when and how to coordinate and when to respond to requests for coordination. The framework is empirically evaluated, in a grid world scenario, and we highlight those types of environments in which it is e#ective.

Since the agent paradigm emerged, agent researchers have faced the challenge of build-ing open societies in which heterogeneous and independently designed entities can work towards similar or different ends. Open societies involve agents that do not necessarily share the same interests, that do not know and might not trust each other, but that can work together and help each other. One of the key omissions in the computational rep-resentation of open societies relates to the need for norms in multi-agent systems, that help to cope with the heterogeneity, the autonomy and the diversity of interests among their members. This also requires agents that can reason about norms because their par-ticipation in a society, rather than predefined, must be voluntary. So, these agents must understand why norms should be adopted and complied with, and why the authority and the power of agents in a society must be respected. This thesis addresses both the in-troduction of norms in systems of autonomous agents, and the modelling of agents that can reason about norms. The thesis makes three main contributions. First, it develops a framework of norma-tive concepts that enables agents to reason about norms and the society in which they participate. Second, it provides the means for agents to identify situations of power, and to use these powers both for the satisfaction of their goals and to understand why the goals of other agents must be satisfied. This is required since agents in an open soci-ety must interact with other agents which are also autonomous, and power represents a means to influence them. Third, this thesis provides models for agents that adopt and comply with norms not as an end, but as the result of a deliberation process in which their goals and motivations are taken into account. This enables agents to voluntarily decide whether participating in a society is important for the achievement of their goals.

This article introduces a general sociological readership to multiagent systems (MAS), a new computer simulation technology that has increasingly been used to describe and explain sociological phenomena. The author uses the term artificial societies to refer to social simulations using MAS and he describes MAS technology and contrasts it with other social simulation technologies. The author argues that MAS have attained a level of maturity where they can be useful tools for sociologists, and he shows how MAS provide new perspectives on contemporary discussions of the micro-macro link in sociological theory by focusing on three aspects of the micro-macro link: micro-to-macro emergence, macro-to-micro social causation, and the dialectic between emergence and social causation.

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In this paper we examine the adaptability of the Japanese style lean organization system and the traditional American style mass organization system under changing environments. From an organizational design perspective, key structural aspects of the two organizations are modeled in a problem solving context using computational methods. Organizational-level performance in terms of decision making accuracy and severity of errors is measured as an indicator of organizational adaptability under conditions where the task environment shifts between predictable to unpredictable or vise versa. Our study shows that both organizations have their respective advantages under different task environments and that they adapt to environmental shifts in different forms. Specifically, when the time pressure is high the lean organization system’s performance is virtually identical to the mass organization system, even though the lean organization system’s members are more proactive. When the time pressure is low, the mass organization system shows a much faster adaptability when the environment shifts to a predictable one but it is also more vulnerable when the environment shifts to an unpredictable one. In contrast, the lean organization system’s response to the changing environment is characterized by its slower adaptability. When the environment shifts to an unpredictable one, the lean organization system shows a gradual improvement till reaching a high level. When the environment shifts to a predictable one, however, the lean organization system shows a gradual