We present Cocoa, a system that implements a novel interaction design pattern -- interactive plans -- for users to collaborate with an AI agent on complex, multi-step tasks in a document editor. Cocoa harmonizes human and AI efforts and enables flexible delegation of agency through two actions: Co-planning (where users collaboratively compose a plan of action with the agent) and Co-execution (where users collaboratively execute plan steps with the agent). Using scientific research as a sample domain, we motivate the design of Cocoa through a formative study with 9 researchers while also drawing inspiration from the design of computational notebooks. We evaluate Cocoa through a user study with 16 researchers and find that when compared to a strong chat baseline, Cocoa improved agent steerability without sacrificing ease of use. A deeper investigation of the general utility of both systems uncovered insights into usage contexts where interactive plans may be more appropriate than chat, and vice versa. Our work surfaces numerous practical implications and paves new paths for interactive interfaces that foster more effective collaboration between humans and agentic AI systems.

翻译：我们提出了Cocoa系统，该系统实现了一种新颖的交互设计模式——交互式计划——使用户能够在文档编辑器中与AI智能体协作完成复杂的多步骤任务。Cocoa通过两种操作协调人类与AI的工作，并实现灵活的代理权委派：协同规划（用户与智能体协作制定行动计划）和协同执行（用户与智能体协作执行计划步骤）。以科学研究为示例领域，我们通过对9名研究人员进行形成性研究来论证Cocoa的设计，同时从计算笔记本的设计中汲取灵感。我们通过对16名研究人员进行用户研究来评估Cocoa，发现与强大的聊天基线相比，Cocoa在不牺牲易用性的情况下提高了智能体的可操控性。对两种系统通用效用的深入探究揭示了交互式计划与聊天各自更适用的场景。我们的工作揭示了众多实际意义，并为促进人类与AI智能体系统更有效协作的交互界面开辟了新路径。