Collaborative Modeling and Group Decision Making Using Chatbots in Social Networks

Modeling is used in the early phases of software and system development to discuss and explore problems, understand domains, and evaluate alternatives and comprehend their implications. In this setting, modeling is inherently collaborative because it involves stakeholders with different backgrounds and expertise, who cooperate to build solutions based on consensus. However, modeling tools typically provide unwieldy diagrammatic editors that might hamper the active involvement of domain experts and lack mechanisms to ease decision making. To tackle these issues, the proposed approach embeds modeling in social networks, so that the modeling interface is natural language that a chatbot interprets to derive an appropriate domain model. Social networks have intuitive built-in discussion mechanisms, while the use of natural language lowers the entry barrier to modeling for domain experts. Moreover, this approach facilitates choosing among modeling alternatives, using soft-consensus decision making. This approach is supported by the SOCIO tool, which works on social networks such as Telegram. This article is part of a theme issue on collaborative modeling.