Collaborative planning, intelligent agents, and mobile computing

The paper provides an overview of several related research projects on collaborative planning. The task of collaborative planning in dynamic environments is described and two related projects are presented. We constructed two interactive systems based on a MOO and performed a usability evaluation using task performance and subjective measures. The first system is a collection of various intelligent agent capabilities implemented in a MOO environment. We situate our system in the context of debates about definitions of agency; our agents provide online assistance to users but the extent to which they embody various theoretical ideas of agency is also of interest. The second project examines the use of hand-held computing devices in a MOO based collaborative planning environment. Basic issues of usability as well as theoretical issues in distributed collaborative planning are discussed.