A visual agent approach for modeling organizations

The author proposes a technique for interface design that, in effect, is an organizational model using iconic visual agents, and reports on work currently in progress to produce a working prototype of the technique. The proposed approach involves the application of object-oriented programming techniques (via Smalltalk-80) to encapsulate data and behavior within a large set of icons. The set of icons constitutes a manipulable model world of the organization that can be used not only for system interface purposes but also as a basis for the development of systems that complete managerial-level tasks. The classification scheme used to model organizations is based on a simple hierarchy consisting of persons, things, and processes at the top level and a set of changeable entities at lower levels. The hierarchical class structure, method inheritance, and message-passing paradigm of Smalltalk-80 offer an environment which is itself a good model for the visual agent approach. Also discussed is a method for embedding knowledge bases within the structure of the agents to provide the agents with a limited but functional intelligence