In this paper, we describe the design and the management of an agent-based system that supports distributed brainstorming activities. The support system is a highly coordinated IoT application composed of many locally installed interface devices, multimedia communication functions, and cloud functions that process application logic and store meeting data. The system is designed to support a variety of brainstorming sessions, so its functionalities must be modifiable and enable the system to be adapted to different environments and user requirements without any loss of performance. System accessibility should be also ensured from any location for any user. These constraints require a flexible and usable support system.

We further discuss the aspects of flexibility and usability that are important in a support system for distributed brainstorming, from which we propose a conceptual schema for flexible and usable support systems. To realize this schema, we present a resource-oriented architecture that can modify the brainstorming support system’s structure and functions. Flexibility is achieved thanks to an agent-based system that manages resources and operates on them according to users’ requests.

We also describe the system architecture, which is organized around a set of channels dedicated to different services proposed to the users. We present in detail a video channel that ensures user awareness during synchronized activities. We then conduct several experiments verifying the usability of important channels in the architecture and present the results of these experiments.

Finally, we discuss experimental scenarios that show how the system owes its adaptability to management based on an agent organization that supports distributed brainstorming and other activities.

在本文中，我们描述了支持分布式头脑风暴活动的基于代理的系统的设计和管理。支持系统是高度协调的IoT应用程序，由许多本地安装的接口设备，多媒体通信功能和云功能组成，用于处理应用程序逻辑和存储会议数据。该系统旨在支持各种集思广益会议，因此它的功能必须是可修改的，并使系统能够适应不同的环境和用户要求，而不会损失任何性能。还应确保任何位置的任何用户的系统可访问性。这些限制要求灵活且可用的支持系统。

我们进一步讨论了在分布式头脑风暴支持系统中非常重要的灵活性和可用性方面，从中我们为灵活和可用的支持系统提出了一个概念性方案。为了实现此模式，我们提出了一种面向资源的体系结构，可以修改头脑风暴支持系统的结构和功能。借助基于代理的系统可以实现灵活性，该系统可以根据用户的请求管理资源并对其进行操作。

我们还描述了系统体系结构，该体系结构围绕专用于向用户提出的不同服务的一组渠道进行组织。我们将详细介绍一个视频频道，以确保同步活动期间的用户意识。然后，我们进行一些实验，以验证体系结构中重要通道的可用性，并介绍这些实验的结果。

最后，我们讨论实验场景，这些场景说明了基于支持分布式头脑风暴和其他活动的代理组织，系统如何赋予其对管理的适应性。