Kwik Talk is a simple conversation simulator in a party setting. It was made to show that the more people you add to a conversation, the harder it is to keep them as a group.
Open it on the browser, select the number of people you want in a group, (optionally add more groups) then click start. A conversation simulation starts. You can increase the speed by dragging the speed slider. Each step is represented as a second, you can jump 30 minutes ahead to see where it goes.
Click on the Show Report button to see the how each conversation group scores over time.
You can add people into random groups by clicking on the Add Person button.
Click on a person to gain insight about his time in the group.
Double click on index.html and it will open on your favorite browser.
(Node CLI coming soon)
I built it after reading comments on hacker news about an article that asked: Why are conversations limited to about four people?
The main goal of the simulator was to see how long it takes for a conversation with a large group breaks up into smaller pieces. There are some values that I have chosen arbitrarily, like Person.talkLife which determines how long a person will talk for, or Group.leaveAfter that determines how long before a person stays in a group without participating before they leave. These values can be changed.
- Mobile Friendly interface.
- Generate a more insightful report from the data generated.
- Make it look like a party please.
- Remove Browser dependency to run on command line.
When I started this project I was very excited, I enjoyed making the little people and the animation. I was expecting a clear answer at the end, thinking the program will give me insights on how conversations deteriorate with more members. Instead, It generated data that I am not exactly sure how to read.
I gathered some data points on the Person object and maybe you can come up with a better way to present it to mean something.
Thank you for reading and happy simulation!
Ibrahim Diallo