Group Thinking Support with Multiple Agents

Creative group activities, e.g., the development of new products, have recently increased in importance. Hence, demands are growing for groupware which is able to help stimulate human creativity. In this paper, aiming to achieve such a system of groupware, we first propose a group thinking model, based on the transitions of the mentality of a thinking entity, and divide group thinking into several basic tasks based on the model. We then describe a creative group thinking support system called ``AIDE,'' which we have been researching and developing. From our experience in developing and testing the uses of AIDE, we have ascertained that a multi-agent architecture is very suitable for achieving a group thinking support system.