Panel Topic: Community Information Service Ben Lambert
Integration of media forms IM, , online forums, mailing lists, Web All can be placed on several continuums: –Personal public –Temporal relevance: instant long term (Web) –Contextual relevance/importance (relevance to the task at hand) –Aesthetics (and time investment in the content)
Recommendations from the information service If integrated, we can possibly recommend some information based a user’s current task Recommendations based on: –User’s ‘mode’ (current task) –Information outflows ( /IM requests) Information recommendations could allow employees to get up to speed more quickly –How to make a Web page or fix your paycheck
User tasks or ‘modes’ Necessary to guide the information system about what should be considered relevant –Reading mail –Writing a paper –Shopping for organization’s products (external) –Accessing the organization’s content (external) –Procrastinating (auto-on) Use the mode to determine what information is needed: mail, papers to cite, etc.
Community examples Newspapers (editors, readers) Slashdot (moderators, readers) Amazon (marketing/sales, customers)
How can we exploit community characteristics? Internal information organization –Groups of people with similar tasks need similar information(akin to mailing lists) Use internal groups provide: –list of services, proper description of org. Outsider access to information creates a demand, this can guide the org. distribution of resources Similarly, org. info service can serve as reverse auction
But, how to navigate the "information space”? If there is so much information, how do you find what you need? Recommendations will not be sufficient Need some way to visualize the info and navigate the visualization
Information Marketplace? Integrated info service can publicize each organization’s supply and demand
$1,000,000 User study for GUI Standardize information protocols –Support topic, priority Develop open (source) front-end systems (Eclipse?) Study how to guarantee privacy and security