Social Interactions in Post-design Phases in Product Development and Consumption: Computational Social Science Modeling - Principia Designae: Pre-Design, Design, and Post-Design - page 147

Situation (production rules that govern conception and action)

Social
Relations

Conception
(Self-organized categorization)

Conception
(production rules)

Valuation

Action
(production rules)

Self-organized Perception

Working
Memory

Affect

Effection

Adaptive Sensation

artifacts Other

Consumers

artifacts Other

Consumers

Fig. 11.3 Simplified agent architecture for Consumers

Perception of other agents is performed through a categorization and comparison
procedure, where agents with direct social connections are labeled 'most similar',
'most dissimilar', 'most admired', 'least admired', etc.
Conception is the highest level of reasoning, including both tacit and explicit
capabilities. Tacit conceptual reasoning is focused on deciding whether a given
product should be considered attractive or not. This is implemented using a SOM
that essentially creates a one-dimensional map of products that it has experienced
and the value and/or utility that is perceived or realized from those products.
A threshold value is used to trigger a decision that the product being inspected
is attractive. The threshold value is adapted through learning by experience.
Conception also includes explicit reasoning about actions, social interactions and
goals. These are implemented symbolically as 'If-Then' production rules.
Situation has the function of cognitive orientation and focus. We implemented it
using production rules that test for conditions that would change a Consumer's
situation, and then fire actions to change their concepts accordingly. Overlapping
situations can be active at the same time. Situations act as conditions on other
conception rules so that each conception rule fires only when one of its applicable
situations is active. Situation also activates other reasoning functions, as appropriate.
Social interactions are implemented using production rules. Generally, social
interaction only occurs when the Consumer is both not in the act of consumption
and is also frustrated by its consumption experiences. The exception to this occurs
when a Consumer's social ties have been reduced to two or fewer and their strength
has fallen below a threshold value. Here, conception rules fire that cause the agent
to create new social ties. This is necessary in order to sustain social networks and