My name is Martin van Velsen and I work for Katia Sycara in her
intelligent software agents Lab. Joe asked me to design a few
mockups of possible visualizations for CoAX. Chances are I'm missing
some information so please let me know if there should be some
changes in the functionality. As far as I understand the task at
hand, we are talking about a visualization that can:
Visualize agent states and their interaction with other agents
Visualize agent groups/communities/societies
Visualize the rights/permissions of an agent to be part of one 
  or more groups
Visually indicate if an agent is allowed to migrate to a different
  group
In thinking of possible visualizations, I came up with a design
rationale. Let me describe the steps I've taken so far. In RETSINA
we experimented with a number of visualization techniques. We
started out with a 3D approach wherein agents were portrayed as
abstract animated objects. This aproach although visually pleasing
did not provide a user with a good overview since no matter what
the viewing angle was there would always be agents outside the current
view. We then took a step back and used the familiar windows icon
desktop as a basis for a new visualizer. This is what we now call
the DemoDisplay. A colleague of mine Sean Owens built an alternative
version of this application where messages passed between agents,
would caused the agent-icons to move closer towards another. This 
visualization is very effective in showing relationships. However
examining individual agents is more difficult. I used an existing
application that will be taking over from our DemoDisplay agent
to create a mockup of what might be a visualizer that can perform
the tasks itemized above. It uses color/brightness enhanced nested 
viewports to show communities. An additional infopane in this 
viewport can be folded out to obtain more information about the 
community. Agents (icons) can be dragged and dropped from one viewport 
(community) to another. 

The proposed application can be seen as a mockup in the attachedment 
called 'mockup.jpg'. This image was based on a powerpoint slide I was 
given to use as a template. 

In the image you can see more than the mockup of a community 
visualization. The application in the screenshot is our Interface Agent. 
As such it is primarily designed to connect an agent's output to an 
interface. The community visualization one aspect of the interface that 
functions as an agent desktop. In the image you will see an brief
overview of what each control does. We do not show the actual interface
window since that is outside the scope of this task in CoAX. However
I will be more than happy to answer any questions on this topic. I've
attached another screenshot with annotations to give a better overview
of what this application does.

See also:

- 2s-1.jpg     2-dimensional agent society layout with interoperators
- 2s-a1.jpg   2-dimensional agent society layout, large systems
- 3s-1.jpg     3-dimensional cluster-cones to display agent groups
- 3s-2.jpg     3-dimensional cluster-cubes to display agent groups
- 3s-2a.jpg   3-dimensional cluster-cubes to display agent groups,
                      showing active agents.

In the 3-dimensional mockups you can see Interoperators in between the
agent clusters. In the two dimensional version one would be able to
see interoperators between viewports.

Martin