People-Oriented Programming: From Agent-Oriented Analysis to the Design of Interactive Systems

摘要

Where the Object-Oriented paradigm set about abstracting objects, Agent-Oriented (AO) theory draws on Psychology to abstract mentalist notions like: beliefs, perceptions, goals, and intentions. As such, the associated Agent-Oriented analysis can be used quite successfully to design interactive systems for people, delivering applications that are heavily individual-oriented. This reversal of the AO lens focuses analysis back upon people. It puts a multi-faceted agent used in analysis 'into the shoes' of the user and turns the design and implementation into one we call People-Oriented Programming (POP). POP calls on users to gather ethnographic data about themselves using Cultural Probes and on end-user innovation via software toolkits. This turn of focus is timely as the analyst/designer of interactive systems is facing new challenges regarding flexibility, user situatedness, dynamic environments, incomplete data, diversity in user needs, sensors in the environment, and users emersed in multiple parallel social worlds. Based on an extensive background analysis this paper distills a set of key aspects that any POP effort should possess.