Swarm UIs: Impact of Assistance on Users' Sense of Agency

Swarm UIs provide assistance to support users in their tasks and are increasingly explored in HCI. This paper studies the extent to which this assistance impacts users’ sense of agency. A reduced sense of agency can lead to non-use of the interface or a diminishing sense of responsibility regarding the consequences of users’ actions. We conduct three experiments studying the impact of three factors on the sense of agency: the level of assistance, the task difficulty, and the predictability of modules. Our nine assistance levels vary in system autonomy and module coordination (proxy vs. no proxy). We find that higher assistance reduces users’ sense of agency, and this effect is not impacted by task difficulty. Predictability only impacts the least assistive interaction techniques. Our results will foster users’ acceptance, responsibility, and use of swarm UIs.