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6 What Software Engineering Has to Offer to Agent-Based Social Simulation 103

Fig. 6.3 Use case diagram for our illustrative example [drawn with Visio]

as they capture the ideas and help to explain them, they are very useful. The use
case diagram which we developed for our illustrative example through focus group
discussions is depicted in Fig. 6.3.

Defining Stereotypes

In social psychology, a stereotype is a thought (or belief) that can be adopted about
specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things (McGarty et al. 2002).
In order to be able to represent a specific population in our simulation models,
we define stereotypes that allow us to classify the members of this population.
We derived our stereotype templates (categories, habits to be considered and type
names) through focus group discussions and through considering the knowledge
gathered previously. Getting the stereotype templates right is more an art than a
science. After long debates we decided to have two categories of stereotypes: one
related to “work time” and the other related to “energy-saving awareness”. Once the
categories were identified, we had to come up with the habits that describe these
stereotypes:
• Habits for work time category:
– Arrival time at office
– Leaving time from office