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108 P.-O. Siebers and F. Klügl

This becomes clearer when we look at the transition definitions in Table 6.6.Here
we can see that, for example, a state change from “outOfOffice” to “inCorridor”
can happen for all user stereotypes during the working week and only for hardcore
worker user stereotypes during the weekend.
In software engineering UML activity diagrams describe how activities are
co-ordinated (the overall flow of control). They represent workflows of stepwise
activities (while state machine diagrams show the dynamic behaviour of an object)
and actions with support for choice, iteration and concurrency. Often people
describe activity diagrams as just being fancy flow charts. The relevant components
of an activity diagram are listed in Table 6.7.
Amongst others, we can use these activity diagrams as a formal way to describe a
decision-making process (logic flow). In our case we use it to describe the logic flow
of the normative comparison process. In order to define the logic flow, we use the
information we gathered from our literature review on psychological factors in the
scoping phase. Figure 6.6 shows as an example the actions happening when the user
agent is in the state “compareWithHistory” (which in the model is triggered once per
simulated month). It is good practice to provide some evidence from the literature
for the rationale behind the decision-making process. This would come from our
scoping phase literature review but might also require some additional resources.
As an example, let’s take the case “Less than former month?Dno / Group?Dyes /

Table 6.6 User state machine transition definitions (excerpt)
From state To state Triggered by When?
outOfOffice inCorridor Condition At typical arrival time during the working week
for all
outOfOffice inCorridor Condition At typical arrival time on Saturdays for hard-core
workers only
inCorridor outOfOffice Condition At typical leave time
inCorridor inOffice Timeout At average after 5 min
inOffice inCorridor Condition At random while at work or when leaving
inCorridor otherRoom Condition At random while at work
otherRoom inCorridor Timeout At average after 10 min
::: ::: ::: :::

Table 6.7 Relevant activity diagram components
Component Symbol Description
Activity Named box with rounded corners (a state that is left
once the activity is finished)
Activity edge Arrow (fires when the previous activity completes)
Synchronisation bar Represent the start (split) or end (join) of
concurrent activities
Decision Used to show decisions
diamond
Start marker Indicate entry point of the diagram
Stop marker Indicate exit point of the diagram