An Interactive Agent for Resource Pushing towards Web-based Cooperative Design

On the purpose of providing design resources to user with higher precision in cooperative design activity, based on an interactive agent model, the workflow features such as user´s role, team, design stage, and other individual information is introduced into resources searching and selected process. First, a resource-based cooperative supported design environment is built as work environment for agent and user. Then, a formalized structure is used to describe user features in interactive agent model. The definition of role, preference, ability description as well as the definition of action, mental state, and other descriptions is included in interactive agent structure. Also a general logical design resource structure is constructed as the basic meta-unit to extract, organize, manage, and operate resources based on analysis of design activity. Therefore, by combining user preference especially some workflow features with design resource feature into resource matching calculation, design resources are pushed to users with more pertinence. A resource-based system has been implemented for a design enterprise. Although the interactive agent still could not act as a user avatar as ideal, it has provided user an easy design environment to re-use resources effectively