Marilyn A. Walker and Pamela Jordan Design-World is a simulation
testbed developed in order to support experiments on the
relationship of communicative action to agents’ processing
limitations. This testbed can be used as a tool for teaching
both technical and methodological concepts in AI. On the
technical side, running Design-World experiments introduces the
student to concepts of dialogue and how it is structured,
natural language generation and planning communicative acts,
multi-agent collaboration as a team during problem-solving, and
the effect of cognitive processing limitations on agent action.
On the methodology side, Design-World introduces concepts in
experimental AI, such as forming and testing a hypothesis via
simulation experiments, methods for evaluating statistical
significance of simulations run with different parameter
settings, and the role and limitations of simulation testbeds in
AI theory development.