MAS 963 Dynamics and interactions

reading assignment:

Required

• Reynolds, C. 1987. Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model
• Minar, Nelson and Donath, J. 1999.Visualizing the crowds at a web site

Supplemental:

• Resnick, M. and Silverman, B. Exploring Emergence
• Readings about individual based models
• Further reading related to flocks

Three things were apparent both in your own descriptions of crowds and in the Whyte video: motion is important, people that are different stand out, and crowds are shaped by and interact with the surrounding environment. I'd like for you to think about ways that an online crowd can feature these properties. One way is to think of the members of the crowds as "agents" - instead of simply having say, a circle to represent someone, we now have a more complex program, which may move or display itself in different ways. The essential visualization problem is the same - you have some sort of input from the real people, which you want to display in some way. The difference is, the display may be more complex and it may interact with the surrounding information in some way.

The paper by Minar & Donath was a course project for this class last year - it does a simple version of showing activity at a website. I'd like for you to read the Reynold's paper and think about how to make a more complex and lively version of the website crowd.

If we were to see viewers as "boids", what would we get? How would you map information about the viewer to action/appearance? How does the "environment" - in this case the page itself - affect their behavior. For you assignment, to get started thinking about crowds of agents, I'd like you to

• write up how you would simulate a real crowd, such as the one you observed last week or one of Whyte's plaza scenes. What are the properties of the individuals (e.g. hungry, anxious to get into the office, in love, etc.) and how do these affect the behavior of the simulated agent? Clearly, you will not be able to exhaustively describe all the details (even much simler simulations are quite difficult) but it should get you thinking. Then,
• write up how you would simulate a virtual crowd on a website. What are the properties of the individuals? How are they depicted?

This assignment is due Tuesday Oct 12 by 5:00 p.m. Please submit the URL of your designs online.