TY - CONF T1 - Co-constructing Family Memory: Understanding the Intergenerational Practices of Passing on Family Stories T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'18) Y1 - 2018 A1 - Jones, Jasmine A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - memory; family; family memory; family stories; storytelling; intergenerational; digital memento; collective memory; AB -

Sharing family stories is an integral aspect of how families remember together and build a sense of connection. Yet, when generations in families are separated by large geographic and temporal distances, the everyday taken-forgranted processes of sharing family stories shift from conversational to mediated forms. To inform HCI research and practice in mediating family stories, we contribute an account of the co-constructive intergenerational social practices enacted to co-construct and interpret family stories. These practices demonstrate the agency of both storytellers and listeners as they work to discover, decipher, and reconstruct family stories. We close by drawing insights from this setting to frame key design challenges for multi-lifespan information systems mediating asynchronous, asymmetric, co-constructive and socially weighted information sharing interactions.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'18) ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Designing Healthcare That Works: A Socio-technical Approach Y1 - 2018 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Herrmann, Thomas A1 - Sean G. Goggins A1 - Michael Prilla A1 - Christian Stary AB -

From Amazon:

Designing Healthcare That Works: A Sociotechnical Approach takes up the pragmatic, messy problems of designing and implementing sociotechnical solutions which integrate organizational and technical systems for the benefit of human health. The book helps practitioners apply principles of sociotechnical design in healthcare and consider the adoption of new theories of change. As practitioners need new processes and tools to create a more systematic alignment between technical mechanisms and social structures in healthcare, the book helps readers recognize the requirements of this alignment.    The systematic understanding developed within the book’s case studies includes new ways of designing and adopting sociotechnical systems in healthcare. For example, helping practitioners examine the role of exogenous factors, like CMS Systems in the U.S. Or, more globally, helping practitioners consider systems external to the boundaries drawn around a particular healthcare IT system is one key to understand the design challenge.    Written by scholars in the realm of sociotechnical systems research, the book is a valuable source for medical informatics professionals, software designers and any healthcare providers who are interested in making changes in the design of the systems.

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Healthcare-That-Works-Sociotechnical

PB - Academic Press CY - Cambridge, MA ER - TY - CHAP T1 - The Recording and Reuse of Psychosocial Information in Care T2 - Designing Healthcare That Works: A Socio-technical Approach Y1 - 2018 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Kai Zheng JF - Designing Healthcare That Works: A Socio-technical Approach PB - Academic Press CY - Cambridge, MA ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Sociotechnical Design for the Care of People with Spinal Cord Injuries T2 - Designing Healthcare That Works: A Socio-technical Approach Y1 - 2018 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Büyüktür, Ayşe G. A1 - Hung, Pei-Yao A1 - Meade, Michelle A1 - Mark W. Newman JF - Designing Healthcare That Works: A Socio-technical Approach ER - TY - CONF T1 - Supporting Collaboratively Constructed Independence: A Study of Spinal Cord Injury T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’18) Y1 - 2018 A1 - Büyüktür, Ayşe G. A1 - Hung, Pei-Yao A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman KW - healthcare; articulation work; information work; chronic illness; collaboration; patient help; patient information; caregiving; temporality; temporal misalignment; information overload; health informatics; medical informatics. AB -

Patients are often overwhelmed in their efforts to understand their illnesses and determine what actions to take. In this paper, we want to show why care is sometimes not co-managed well between clinicians and patients, and the necessary information is often not well coordinated. Through a 2.5-year field study of an adult bone marrow transplant (BMT) clinic, we show there are different experiences of temporal ordering, or temporalities, between clinicians and patients (and their caregivers). We also show that misalignments between these temporalities can seriously affect the articulation (coordination) and information work that must go on for people to co-manage their conditions with clinicians. As one example, information flows can be misaligned, as a result of differing temporalities, causing sometimes an overwhelming amount of information to be presented and sometimes a lack of properly contextualized information. We also argue that these misalignments in temporalities, important in medicine, are a general coordination problem. Author Keywords

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’18) ER - TY - CONF T1 - Caring Through Data: Attending to the Social and Emotional Experiences of Health Datafication T2 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW'17) Y1 - 2017 A1 - Kaziunas, Elizabeth A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. A1 - Lindtner, Silvia A1 - Lee, Joyce M. KW - caregiving KW - chronic illness management KW - data work KW - diabetes KW - diy health KW - emotion work KW - health KW - health and wellness KW - health informatics KW - healthcare technology KW - personal data KW - personal health informatics KW - remote monitoring KW - self-tracking AB -

Designing systems to support the social context of personal data is a topic of importance in CSCW, particularly in the area of health and wellness. The relational complexities and psychological consequences of living with health data, however, are still emerging. Drawing on a 12+ month ethnography and corroborating survey data, we detail the experiences of parents using Nightscout--an open source, DIY system for remotely monitoring blood glucose data-with their children who have type one diabetes. Managing diabetes with Nightscout is a deeply relational and (at times) contested activity for parent-caregivers, whose practices reveal the tensions and vulnerabilities of caregiving work enacted through data. As engagement with personal data becomes an increasingly powerful way people experience life, our findings call for alternative data narratives that reflect a multiplicity of emotional concerns and social arrangements. We propose the analytic lens of caring-through-data as a way forward.

JF - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW'17) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Design Considerations for Semi-Automated Tracking: Self-Care Plans in Spinal Cord Injury T2 - Proceedings of Pervasive Health 2017 Y1 - 2017 A1 - Büyüktür, Ayşe G. A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Hung, Pei-Yao KW - medical informatics; patient-centered care; health IT; self-care plans; self-monitoring; semi-automated tracking; quantified self; context-aware environments; disability; rehabilitation; requirements; user needs; healthcare; healthcare IT AB -

Self-care in Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is highly complex and individualized. Patients struggle to adapt to life with SCI, especially when they go home after rehabilitation. We conducted a field study to understand how self-care plans work for patients in their lived experience and what requirements there might be for an augmentative system. We found that patients develop their own self-care plans over time, and that routinization plays a key role in SCI self-care. Importantly, self-care activities exist in different states of routinization that have implications for the technological support that should be provided. Our findings suggest that self-care can be supported by different types of semi-automated tracking that account for the different routinization of activities, the collaborative nature of care, and the life-long, dynamic nature of this condition. The findings from our study also extend recent guidelines for semi-automated tracking in health

JF - Proceedings of Pervasive Health 2017 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Information Work in Bone Marrow Transplant: Reducing Misalignment of Perspectives T2 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Y1 - 2017 A1 - Büyüktür, Ayşe G. A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - articulation work KW - bone marrow transplant KW - caregiving KW - chronic illness KW - collaboration KW - health informatics KW - information overload KW - information work KW - medical informatics. KW - patient help KW - patient information KW - temporal misalignment KW - temporality AB -

Patients are often overwhelmed in their efforts to understand their illnesses and determine what actions to take. In this paper, we want to show why care is sometimes not co-managed well between clinicians and patients, and the necessary information is often not well coordinated. Through a 2.5-year field study of an adult bone marrow transplant (BMT) clinic, we show there are different experiences of temporal ordering, or temporalities, between clinicians and patients (and their caregivers). We also show that misalignments between these temporalities can seriously affect the articulation (coordination) and information work that must go on for people to co-manage their conditions with clinicians. As one example, information flows can be misaligned, as a result of differing temporalities, causing sometimes an overwhelming amount of information to be presented and sometimes a lack of properly contextualized information. We also argue that these misalignments in temporalities, important in medicine, are a general coordination problem.

JF - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing SN - 978-1-4503-4335-0 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - KidKeeper: Design for Capturing Audio Mementos of Everyday Life for Parents of Young Children T2 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Y1 - 2017 A1 - Jones, Jasmine A1 - Merritt, David A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - audio KW - candid KW - capture KW - children KW - curation KW - digital memento KW - family memory KW - memorabilia KW - memory artifact KW - parents KW - tangible AB -

Children grow up fast. Many parents want to capture the candid, fleeting moments of their young children's lives to treasure later, but these moments are difficult to anticipate and to capture without disruption. Current technologies to address this are limited to indiscriminately capturing everything, or are dependent on parents' presence and prescience to initiate capture and manually record the moment. To address these limitations, we introduce KidKeeper, a toy-like system to capture, select, and deliver everyday family memories with minimal effort and disruption to family life. It uses an innovative approach to capture that we call "integrated capture," that combines previous attempts to continuously capture family memories with the practice-oriented approach of "unremarkable computing" to embed capture capabilities unobtrusively into everyday activities. In our study, we explore how technologies like KidKeeper mediate and align the different interests and values of various family members, namely parents who want precious moments and children who want to play, towards accomplishing a family goal to capture memories of everyday life.

JF - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing SN - 978-1-4503-4335-0 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Kurator: Using The Crowd to Help Families With Personal Curation Tasks T2 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Y1 - 2017 A1 - Merritt, David A1 - Jones, Jasmine A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. A1 - Lasecki, Walter S. KW - crowdsourcing KW - curation KW - digital audio KW - digital curation KW - hybrid intelligence KW - mixed-expertise KW - personal curation AB -

People capture photos, audio recordings, video, and more on a daily basis, but organizing all these digital artifacts quickly becomes a daunting task. Automated solutions struggle to help us manage this data because they cannot understand its meaning. In this paper, we introduce Kurator, a hybrid intelligence system leveraging mixed-expertise crowds to help families curate their personal digital content. Kurator produces a refined set of content via a combination of automated systems able to scale to large data sets and human crowds able to understand the data. Our results with 5 families show that Kurator can reduce the amount of effort needed to find meaningful memories within a large collection. This work also suggests that crowdsourcing can be used effectively even in domains where personal preference is key to accurately solving the task.

JF - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Curating an Infinite Basement: Understanding How People Manage Collections of Sentimental Artifacts T2 - Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work Y1 - 2016 A1 - Jones, Jasmine A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - collection management KW - curation KW - digital curation KW - digital memento KW - family memory KW - memorabilia KW - memory artifacts KW - pervasive computing KW - sentimental artifacts KW - ubicomp AB -

Valuable memories are increasingly captured and stored as digital artifacts. However, as people amass these digital mementos, their collections are rarely curated, due to the volume of content, the effort involved, and a general lack of motivation, which can result in important artifacts being obscured and forgotten in an accumulation of content over time. Our study aims to better understand the challenges and goals of people dealing with large collections, and to provide insight into how people select and pay attention to large collections of digital mementos. We conducted an interpretivist analysis of forum data from UnclutterNow.com, where participants discussed issues they face in curating the sentimental artifacts in their homes. We uncovered a number of social, temporal, and spatial affordances and concerns that influence the ways that people curate their memories, and discuss how curation is closely tied to how people use storage and display in their home. In our study, we drew out and unpack "curation regimes" as patterns that people enact to focus the attention they are able to pay to the artifacts in their collections. We close with a discussion of the design opportunities for memory artifacts, which support and facilitate the curatorial processes of users managing digital mementos in everyday life.

JF - Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work UR - Complete ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Expertise Finding: A Socio-Technical Design Space Analysis T2 - Expertise, Communication, and Organizing Y1 - 2016 A1 - Merritt, David A1 - Hung, Pei-Yao A1 - Mark S. Ackerman ED - Treem, Jeffrey W. ED - Leonardi, Paul M. KW - expertise finding JF - Expertise, Communication, and Organizing PB - Oxford University CY - New York UR - MISSING_URL_ABSTRACT ER - TY - JOUR T1 - User-Centered Design Groups to Engage Patients and Caregivers with a Personalized Health Information Technology Tool JF - Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation Y1 - 2016 A1 - Maher, Molly A1 - Kaziunas, Elizabeth A1 - Ackerman, Mark A1 - Derry, Holly A1 - Forringer, Rachel A1 - Miller, Kristen A1 - O'Reilly, Dennis A1 - An, Larry C A1 - Tewari, Muneesh A1 - Hanauer, David A A1 - Choi, Sung Won KW - bone marrow transplant KW - caregivers KW - design group KW - engagement KW - health IT KW - patient activation KW - pediatric; hematopoietic cell transplantation KW - user-centered design AB -

Health information technology (IT) has opened exciting avenues for capturing, delivering and sharing data, and offers the potential to develop cost-effective, patient-focused applications. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of health IT applications such as outpatient portals. Rigorous evaluation is fundamental to ensure effectiveness and sustainability, as resistance to more widespread adoption of outpatient portals may be due to lack of user friendliness. Health IT applications that integrate with the existing electronic health record and present information in a condensed, user-friendly format could improve coordination of care and communication. Importantly, these applications should be developed systematically with appropriate methodological design and testing to ensure usefulness, adoption, and sustainability. Based on our prior work that identified numerous information needs and challenges of HCT, we developed an experimental prototype of a health IT tool, the BMT Roadmap. Our goal was to develop a tool that could be used in the real-world, daily practice of HCT patients and caregivers (users) in the inpatient setting. Herein, we examined the views, needs, and wants of users in the design and development process of the BMT Roadmap through user-centered Design Groups. Three important themes emerged: 1) perception of core features as beneficial (views), 2) alerting the design team to potential issues with the user interface (needs); and 3) providing a deeper understanding of the user experience in terms of wider psychosocial requirements (wants). These findings resulted in changes that led to an improved, functional BMT Roadmap product, which will be tested as an intervention in the pediatric HCT population in the fall of 2015 (ClinicalTrials.govNCT02409121).

VL - 22 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Designing for Lived Health: A Practice-Based Approach for Person-Centered Health Information Technologies T2 - Designing Socially Embedded Technologies in the Real-World Y1 - 2015 A1 - Elizabeth Kaziunas A1 - Mark S. Ackerman JF - Designing Socially Embedded Technologies in the Real-World PB - Springer UR - MISSING_URL_ABSTRACT_KEYWORDS ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Identifying unmet informational needs in the inpatient setting to increase patient and caregiver engagement in the context of pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplantation JF - Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Y1 - 2015 A1 - Kaziunas, Elizabeth A1 - Hanauer, David A A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Choi, Sung Won KW - bone marrow transplantation KW - electronic health records KW - inpatients KW - patient participation KW - patient-centered care AB -

Background Patient-centered care has been shown to improve patient outcomes, satisfaction, and engagement. However, there is a paucity of research on patient-centered care in the inpatient setting, including an understanding of unmet informational needs that may be limiting patient engagement. Pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) represents an ideal patient population for elucidating unmet informational needs, due to the procedure’s complexity and its requirement for caregiver involvement.

Methods We conducted field observations and semi-structured interviews of pediatric HSCT caregivers and patients to identify informational challenges in the inpatient hospital setting. Data were analyzed using a thematic grounded theory approach.

Results Three stages of the caregiving experience that could potentially be supported by a health information technology system, with the goal of enhancing patient/caregiver engagement, were identified: (1) navigating the health system and learning to communicate effectively with the healthcare team, (2) managing daily challenges of caregiving, and (3) transitioning from inpatient care to long-term outpatient management.

Discussion We provide four practical recommendations to meet the informational needs of pediatric HSCT patients and caregivers: (1) provide patients/caregivers with real-time access to electronic health record data, (2) provide information about the clinical trials in which the patient is enrolled, (3) provide information about the patient’s care team, and (4) properly prepare patients and caregivers for hospital discharge.

Conclusion Pediatric HSCT caregivers and patients have multiple informational needs that could be met with a health information technology system that integrates data from several sources, including electronic health records. Meeting these needs could reduce patients’ and caregivers’ anxiety surrounding the care process; reduce information asymmetry between caregivers/patients and providers; empower patients/caregivers to participate in the care process; and, ultimately, increase patient/caregiver engagement in the care process.

VL - 23 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Issues and opportunities in transitions from speciality care: a field study of bone marrow transplant JF - Behaviour & Information Technology Y1 - 2015 A1 - Ayse G Büyüktür A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - chronic illness KW - continuity of care KW - expertise sharing KW - health informatics KW - healthcare KW - medical informatics KW - medical work KW - patient information KW - speciality transition AB -

Transitional points in patient care, such as handoffs and hospital discharges, are known to have unique information challenges. Transitions following long-term care involve even more complex processes. In this study, we examine the informational and contextual issues for patients transitioning from the care of specialists who have come to know them through long-term partnerships to clinicians potentially less familiar with patients’ chronic care concerns. The context is bone marrow transplant (BMT); specifically allogeneic transplants, which involve risk for particular chronic complications and a long-term process that requires close monitoring of patients by BMT specialists for at least a year beyond the actual transplant procedure. Based on a 16-month field study, we examine patient experience and clinician viewpoints regarding the transition of patient responsibility from BMT clinicians to primary care or oncologists, and detail the important issues for patients and clinicians.

VL - 34 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside JF - Commun. ACM Y1 - 2015 A1 - Michael S. Bernstein A1 - Little, Greg A1 - Miller, Robert C. A1 - Hartmann, Björn A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - David R. Karger A1 - Crowell, David A1 - Panovich, Katrina KW - crowdsourcing AB -

This paper introduces architectural and interaction patterns for integrating crowdsourced human contributions directly into user interfaces. We focus on writing and editing, complex endeavors that span many levels of conceptual and pragmatic activity. Authoring tools offer help with pragmatics, but for higher-level help, writers commonly turn to other people. We thus present Soylent, a word processing interface that enables writers to call on Mechanical Turk workers to shorten, proofread, and otherwise edit parts of their documents on demand. To improve worker quality, we introduce the Find-Fix-Verify crowd programming pattern, which splits tasks into a series of generation and review stages. Evaluation studies demonstrate the feasibility of crowdsourced editing and investigate questions of reliability, cost, wait time, and work time for edits.

VL - 58 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CONF T1 - Transition and Reflection in the Use of Health Information: The Case of Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Caregivers T2 - Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15) Y1 - 2015 A1 - Elizabeth Kaziunas A1 - Ayse G Büyüktür A1 - Jones, Jasmine A1 - Choi, Sung W A1 - David A Hanauer A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - caregiver KW - caregiving KW - emotional work KW - health and wellness KW - health informatics KW - health information KW - healthcare technology KW - interactional work KW - medication informatics KW - patient information KW - patients KW - pediatric KW - reflection KW - reflecton work KW - social worlds KW - work AB -

The impact of health information on caregivers is of increasing interest to HCI/CSCW in designing systems to support the social and emotional dimensions of managing health. Drawing on an interview study, as well as corroborating data including a multi-year ethnography, we detail the practices of caregivers (particularly parents) in a bone marrow transplant (BMT) center. We examine the interconnections between information and emotion work performed by caregivers through a liminal lens, highlighting the BMT experience as a time of transition and reflection in which caregivers must quickly adapt to the new social world of the hospital and learn to manage a wide range of patient needs. The transition from parent to 'caregiver' is challenging, placing additional emotional burdens on the intensive information work for managing BMT. As a time of reflection, the BMT experience also provides an occasion for generative thinking and alternative approaches to health management. Our study findings call for health systems that reflect a design paradigm focused on 'transforming lives' rather than 'transferring information.'

JF - Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15) PB - ACM UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - House Memory: On Activity Traces As a Form of Cultural Heritage JF - ACM interactions Y1 - 2014 A1 - Dong, Tao A1 - Newman, Mark W. A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - activity traces KW - cultural heritage KW - houses KW - memory KW - memory applications KW - memory traces KW - pervasive environments KW - ubicomp environments AB -

In the past few years, we have seen a wave of new "smart" consumer products that make everyday places aware of our activities. There are thermostats that adjust temperatures based on occupancy [1], doors that alert us when we forget to close them, and "beacons" that track our indoor locations [2]. With recent advances in sensor technologies and the Internet of Things, every corner of our world is slated to gain some capability of capturing our activity traces.

As everyday places become more aware of what we do, an enormous volume of activity traces can be captured and potentially amassed over the long run. Yet the narratives surrounding those technologies mostly focus on short-term gains in efficiency and comfort; few have considered the long-term value of those captured traces. We are concerned that traces will be discarded prematurely, since the perceived risk to privacy easily outweighs the as yet unclear benefits. Thus, it is important to ask: How might we, or rather our future generations, find digital footprints left in a place useful in the long term?

VL - 21 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CONF T1 - "If These Walls Could Talk": Designing with Memories of Places T2 - Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Y1 - 2014 A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman KW - activity traces KW - family memory KW - memory KW - memory artifacts KW - pervasive environments KW - ubicomp environments AB -

This work explores the potential value of using the enormous amount of activity traces latest ubicomp environments have started to capture. We sought to understand potential practices of using these traces in the long term through a field-based study in the USA that examines how today's people use traces left by their predecessors in the houses where they live.

We found that our participants received, discovered, and made use of many small traces held by artifacts, people, and building materials. Those traces were used to provide practical assistance to participants' appropriation of their houses as well as to connect participants with the past in an evocative manner. Our analysis highlights the roles played by the social context and the mutability of the house in the experience of remembering the house as well as in shaping participants' attitudes of passing on traces of prior appropriation of the place. To illustrate the design implications of those findings, we offer three design concepts to characterize potential ways of using traces captured by ubicomp environments in the long term.

JF - Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems PB - ACM CY - New York, NY, USA SN - 978-1-4503-2902-6 UR - Complete-NoFile ER - TY - CONF T1 - Localizing Chronic Disease Management: Information Work and Health Translations T2 - Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting Y1 - 2013 A1 - Elizabeth Kaziunas A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Veinot, Tiffany C.E. KW - community health KW - health informatics KW - health information KW - health translations KW - information access AB -

Based on interviews with people who had diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease in Flint, Michigan, we found people actively doing information work to manage their health in the face of poverty, potentially violent conditions, high stress, and a distrust of institutionalized medicine. More specifically, we observed people translating information into the context of their everyday lives. We present various translations of health information in the form of local strategies for chronic illness management. Study findings highlight initial implications to support health information services on a community level.

JF - Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Sharing Knowledge and Expertise: The CSCW View of Knowledge Management JF - Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Journal Y1 - 2013 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Juri Dachtera A1 - Pipek, Volkmar A1 - Wulf, Volker KW - collective intelligence KW - cscw KW - expertise finding KW - expertise sharing KW - information access KW - knowledge sharing KW - QA AB -

Knowledge Management (KM) is a diffuse and controversial term, which has been used by a large number of research disciplines. CSCW, over the last 20 years, has taken a critical stance towards most of these approaches, and instead, CSCW shifted the focus towards a practice-based perspective. This paper surveys CSCW researchers’ viewpoints on what has become called ‘knowledge sharing’ and ‘expertise sharing’. These are based in an understanding of the social contexts of knowledge work and practices, as well as in an emphasis on communication among knowledgeable humans. The paper provides a summary and overview of the two strands of knowledge and expertise sharing in CSCW, which, from an analytical standpoint, roughly represent ’generations’ of research: an ’object-centric’ and a ’people-centric’ view. We also survey the challenges and opportunities ahead.

VL - 22 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Social Overlays: Collectively Making Websites More Usable T2 - 14th IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Interact 2013) Y1 - 2013 A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman KW - crowdsourcing KW - social computing KW - web AB -

Many small organizations lack the expertise and resources to conduct usability evaluations of their websites. Social Overlays, presented here, is a new system that allows a community of users to collectively improve their website. Social Overlays enables end–users to identify and repair common user interface problems through creating “overlays” on web pages as part of their regular use, thereby improving usability while reducing the need for professional services. In short, Social Overlays harnesses the diversity of experience and ideas within a community to "crowd source" usability. To evaluate Social Overlays, we examined whether a group of community members without any usability training could use Social Overlays to identify and repair UI problems on their medium–sized community’s website. We found that they could. Community users were able to uncover a large number of UI problems and formulate reasonable solutions to the problems they identified. In addition, we compared Social Overlays to two standard ways of assessing web-site usability: expert inspection and usability testing. We found that Social Overlays users identified more problems, and their reported problems differed in useful ways from those found by the experts and the usability testing team.

JF - 14th IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Interact 2013) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Collaborative help in chronic disease management: supporting individualized problems T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer–Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’12) Y1 - 2012 A1 - Huh, Jina A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - diabetes KW - health informatics KW - health information KW - QA AB -

Coping with chronic illness disease is a long and lonely journey, because the burden of managing the illness on a daily basis is placed upon the patients themselves. In this paper, we present our findings for how diabetes patient support groups help one another find individualized strategies for managing diabetes. Through field observations of face-to-face diabetes support groups, content analysis of an online diabetes community, and interviews, we found several help interactions that are critical in helping patients in finding individualized solutions. Those are: (1) patients operationalize their experiences to easily contextualize and share executable strategies; (2) operationalization has to be done within the larger context of sharing illness trajectories; and (3) the support groups develop common understanding towards diabetes management. We further discuss how our findings translate into design implications for supporting chronic illness patients in online community settings.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer–Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’12) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Cooperative documentation: the patient problem list as a nexus in electronic health records T2 - Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’12) Y1 - 2012 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Kai Zheng A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - David A Hanauer KW - health information KW - information access KW - medical informatics KW - medical information AB -

The patient Problem List (PL) is a mandated documentation component of electronic health records supporting the longitudinal summarization of patient information in addition to facilitating the coordination of care by multidisciplinary medical teams. In this paper, we report an ethnographic study that examined the institutionalization of the PL. Specifically, we explored: (1) how different groups (primary care providers, inpatient hospitalists, specialists, and emergency doctors) perceived the purposes of the PL differently; (2) how these deviated perceptions might affect their use of the PL; and (3) how the technical design of the PL facilitated or hindered the clinical practices of these groups. We found significant ambiguity regarding the definition, benefits, and use of the PL across different groups. We also found that certain groups (e.g. primary care providers) had developed effective cooperative strategies regarding the use of the PL; however, suboptimal usage was common among other user types, which could have a profound impact on quality of care and safety. Based on these findings, we provide suggestions to improve the design of the PL, particularly on strengthening its support on longitudinal and cooperative clinical practices.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’12) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Discovery-based Games for Learning Software Y1 - 2012 A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Mira Dontcheva A1 - Diana Joseph A1 - Karrie Karahalios A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - help AB -

We propose using discovery-based learning games to teach people how to use complex software. Specifically, we developed Jigsaw, a learning game that asks players to solve virtual jigsaw puzzles using tools in Adobe Photoshop. We conducted an eleven-person lab study of the prototype, and found the game to be an effective learning medium that can complement demonstration-based tutorials. Not only did the participants learn about new tools and techniques while actively solving the puzzles in Jigsaw, but they also recalled techniques that they had learned previously but had forgotten.

UR - Complete ER - TY - Generic T1 - Family Memory in a Taiwanese Context T2 - CHI’12 Workshop on "Heritage Matters: Designing for Current and Future Values Through Digital and Social Technologies" Y1 - 2012 A1 - Ying-yu Chen A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - memory KW - memory artifacts AB -

In this paper, we explore how Taiwanese practices of family memory and memory artifacts show significant differences from those in the US, suggesting important memory practices are cultural and collective. For example, Taiwanese do not keep pictures of deceased ancestors in the same way as Americans might, they do not have family heirlooms, nor do they keep extensive childhood memorabilia. We studied this through 20 interviews and household inventories conducted in Taiwan.

JF - CHI’12 Workshop on "Heritage Matters: Designing for Current and Future Values Through Digital and Social Technologies" UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Successful Classroom Deployment of a Social Document Annotation System T2 - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12), May, 2012 Y1 - 2012 A1 - Sacha Zyto A1 - David R. Karger A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mahajan, Sanjoy KW - annotation KW - collaboration KW - e-learning KW - forum KW - hypertext AB -

NB is an in-place collaborative document annotation website targeting students reading lecture notes and draft textbooks. Serving as a discussion forum in the document margins, NB lets users ask and answer questions about their reading material as they are reading. NB users can read and annotate documents using their web browsers, without any special plug-ins. We describe the NB system and its evaluation in real class environment, where students used it to submit their reading assignments, ask questions and get or provide feedback. We show that this tool can be and has been successfully incorporated into a number of different classes at different institutions. To understand how and why, we focus on a particularly successful class deployment where the instructor adapted his teaching style to take students' comment into account. We analyze the annotation practices that were observed - including the way geographic locality was exploited in ways unavailable in traditional forums - and discuss general design implications for online annotation tools in academia.

JF - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12), May, 2012 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CONF T1 - The Way I Talk to You: Sentiment Expression in an Organizational Context T2 - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12) Y1 - 2012 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Wen, Zhen A1 - Lin, Ching-Yung KW - CMC KW - collaborative help KW - online communities AB -

Sentiment is a rich and important dimension of social interaction. However, its presence in computer-mediated communication in corporate settings is not well understood. This paper provides a preliminary study of people’s expression of sentiment in email conversations in an organizational context. The study reveals that sentiment levels evolve over time during the process of newcomers’ socialization, that sentiment varies according to tie-strength with the recipient, and that sentiment patterns can be indicative of one’s position in the corporate social network as well as job performance. These findings shed light on the complex and dynamic nature of sentiment patterns, and would inspire further explorations and applications of sentiment analysis in organizations.

JF - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Collaborating Globally: Culture and Organizational Computer-Mediated Communications T2 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2011) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Wen, Zhen A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lin, Ching-Yung KW - calendaring KW - computer-mediated communication (CMC) KW - cultural studies KW - Instant Messaging (IM) KW - organizational communication KW - sentiment analysis KW - social interaction KW - social networks AB -

Culture shapes interpersonal communication. However, little is known about how culture interacts with computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools in a business context. We present a large-scale empirical study of cultural differences in computer mediated social interactions in a global company. Our dataset includes 9,000 volunteer users and more than 20 million records of their email and Instant Messaging conversations. We compared social network characteristics, preferences for CMC tools, and expression of sentiment across employees working in seven countries. Significant differences emerged and the patterns are consistent with the inherent cultural characteristics as suggested by cultural theories. In addition, we uncover the complex manner in which culture interacts with preference and use of different communication mediums. The existence of pervasive and complex cultural differences, points to the need to understand and account for such differences in designing cross-cultural collaborative systems.

JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2011) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - CPOE workarounds, boundary objects, and assemblages T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Kai Zheng KW - assemblage KW - boundary object KW - CPOE KW - cscw KW - EHR KW - electronic patient records KW - health informatics KW - health information KW - information access KW - medical informatics KW - medical information KW - medical orders AB -

We conducted an ethnographically based study at a large teaching hospital to examine clinician workarounds engendered by the adoption of a Computerized Prescribe Order Entry (CPOE) system. Specifically, we investigated how adoption of computerized systems may alter medical practice, order management in particular, as manifested through the working-around behavior developed by doctors and nurses to accommodate the changes in their day-to-day work environment. In this paper, we focus on clinicians’ workarounds, including those workarounds that gradually disappeared and those that have become routinized. Further, we extend the CSCW concept of boundary object (to "assemblage") in order to understand the workarounds created with CPOE system use and the changing nature of clinical practices that are increasingly computerized.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Culture Matters: A Survey Study of Social Q&A Behavior T2 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’11) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Morris, Meredith Ringel A1 - Jaime Teevan A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - collaborative help KW - collective help KW - intercultural KW - QA KW - social search AB -

Online social networking tools are used around the world by people to ask questions of their friends, because friends provide direct, reliable, contextualized, and interactive responses. However, although the tools used in different cultures for question asking are often very similar, the way they are used can be very different, reflecting unique inherent cultural characteristics. We present the results of a survey designed to elicit cultural differences in people’s social question asking behaviors across the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and India. The survey received responses from 933 people distributed across the four countries who held similar job roles and were employed by a single organization. Responses included information about the questions they ask via social networking tools, and their motivations for asking and answering questions online. The results reveal culture as a consistently significant factor in predicting people’s social question and answer behavior. The prominent cultural differences we observe might be traced to people’s inherent cultural characteristics (e.g., their cognitive patterns and social orientation), and should be comprehensively considered in designing social search systems.

JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’11) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Rating Friends Without Making Enemies T2 - Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media Y1 - 2011 A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Lauterbach, Debra A1 - Teng, CY A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - couch surfing KW - e-communities KW - friends KW - online communities KW - rating systems KW - trust AB -

As online social networks expand their role beyond maintaining existing relationships, they may look to more faceted ratings to support the formation of new connections between their users. Our study focuses on one community employing faceted ratings, CouchSurfing.org, and combines data analysis of ratings, a large-scale survey, and in-depth interviews. In order to understand the ratings, we revisit the notions of friendship and trust and uncover an asymmetry: close friendship includes trust, but high levels of trust can be achieved without close friendship. To users, providing faceted ratings presents challenges, including differentiating and quantifying inherently subjective feelings such as friendship and trust, concern over a friend’s reaction to a rating, and knowledge of how ratings can affect others’ reputations. One consequence of these issues is the near absence of negative feedback, even though a small portion of actual experiences and privately held ratings are negative. We show how users take this into account when formulating and interpreting ratings, and discuss designs that could encourage more balanced feedback.

JF - Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Supporting Collaborative Help for Individualized Use T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Huh, Jina A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - appropriation KW - collaborative help KW - configuration KW - customization KW - e-communities KW - individualized use KW - MythTV KW - pervasive systems KW - Q&A KW - social Q&A KW - tailorability AB -

In this paper, we seek to advance the research around utilizing collaborative help for supporting individualized use of technologies. We do this by shedding light on the ways that users of MythTV, a highly flexible open-source software system for home entertainment enthusiasts, collaboratively help one another in maintaining their individualized MythTV systems. Through an analysis of the MythTV user community’s mailing list archive, documentation, and wiki, along with user interviews, we discuss how the community utilizes configuration artifacts as proxies to easily mobilize and exchange knowledge. While exchanging concrete artifacts such as scripts and configuration files was seen to sometimes increase the efficiency of knowledge transfer, it also presented several challenges. Negotiating the transparency of configuration artifacts, navigating the customization and appropriation gulfs, and aligning usage trajectories all emerged as problematic areas. We discuss design implications that center around addressing these challenges. Our findings provide a a useful new perspective on how to support users in their individualized use of systems.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’11) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Supporting Re-Use in DIY Software Projects: A Gray-Box Approach T2 - Workshop on Hacking, Tinkering, Crafts & Inventive Leisure Practices, ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Y1 - 2011 A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Huh, Jina A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - collaborative help KW - configuration KW - hacking communities KW - knowledge sharing KW - recommender systems KW - Software customization AB -

DIYers who work with software often attempt to reuse others’ work wherever they can as they seek to assemble, modify, and extend their systems. In this paper, we briefly discuss the challenges faced by software DIYers in the process of reusing others’ software configurations through our study of the MythTV community. We also discuss the benefits of enabling users to engage with others’ configurations as “gray-boxes,” allowing them to pay attention to just the parts that must be opened up and modified and ignore the rest. We propose a new technical facility called Tailor Wear to give users guidance and hints about where and how to modify configuration artifacts by visually presenting the tailoring traces left by similar or selected peers.

JF - Workshop on Hacking, Tinkering, Crafts & Inventive Leisure Practices, ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - The trouble with social computing systems research T2 - Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, extended abstracts (CHI EA ’11) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Michael S. Bernstein A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Ed H. Chi A1 - Robert C. Miller KW - evaluation KW - social computing KW - systems research AB -

Social computing has led to an explosion of research in understanding users, and it has the potential to similarly revolutionize systems research. However, the number of papers designing and building new sociotechnical systems has not kept pace. We analyze challenges facing social computing systems research, ranging from misaligned methodological incentives, evaluation expectations, double standards, and relevance compared to industry. We suggest improvements for the community to consider so that we can chart the future of our field.

JF - Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, extended abstracts (CHI EA ’11) UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CONF T1 - Virtual Gifts and Guanxi: Supporting Social Exchange in a Chinese Online Community T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer–Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’11) Y1 - 2011 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic KW - Chinese culture KW - gift KW - guanxi KW - inter-cultural studies KW - online community KW - reciprocity KW - social exchange KW - social interactions KW - virtual points AB -

Significant cultural differences persist between East and West. Software systems that have been proven to operate efficiently within one culture can fail in the context of the other, especially if they are intended to support rich social interactions. In this paper we demonstrate how a virtual currency system, not unlike ones employed by many US-based websites, evolved within a thriving Chinese online forum into an essential medium for extremely diverse and culturally specific social exchange activities. The social interactions reflect the traditional Chinese idea of guanxi, or interpersonal influence and connectedness, while at the same time incorporating the norms of a new generation of Internet users.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer–Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’11) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Activity lifespan: An analysis of user survival patterns in online knowledge sharing communities T2 - International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Wei, Xiao A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic KW - community evolution KW - e-communities KW - intercultural KW - online communities KW - Q&A KW - QA communities KW - survival analysis AB -

Retaining participation is crucial for information services, online knowledge sharing services among them. We present the first comprehensive analysis of users’ activity lifespan across three predominant online knowledge sharing communities. Extending previous work focusing on initial interactions of new users, we use survival analysis to quantify participation patterns that can be used to predict individual lifespan over the long term. We discuss how cross site differences in user participation and the underlying factors can be related to differences in system design and culture. We conduct a longitudinal comparison of the communities’ evolvement between two distinct stages, the initial days just after the site launch and one year later. We also observe that sub communities corresponding to different topics differ in their ability to sustain users. All results reveal the complexity and diversity in users’ engagement to a site and design implications are discussed.

JF - International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM’10) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Bringing the field into the lab: supporting capture and replay of contextual data for the design of context-aware applications T2 - Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST ’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Jungwoo Kim A1 - Atul Prakash A1 - Zhenan Hong A1 - Jacob Mandel A1 - Tao Dong KW - context-aware KW - data capture KW - design tools KW - pervasive KW - pervasive environments AB -

When designing context-aware applications, it is difficult to for designers in the studio or lab to envision the contextual conditions that will be encountered at runtime. Designers need a tool that can create/re-create naturalistic contextual states and transitions, so that they can evaluate an application under expected contexts. We have designed and developed RePlay: a system for capturing and playing back sensor traces representing scenarios of use. RePlay contributes to research on ubicomp design tools by embodying a structured approach to the capture and playback of contextual data. In particular, RePlay supports: capturing naturalistic data through Capture Probes, encapsulating scenarios of use through Episodes, and supporting exploratory manipulation of scenarios through Transforms. Our experiences using RePlay in internal design projects illustrate its potential benefits for ubicomp design.

JF - Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST ’10) UR - Complete-NoFile ER - TY - CONF T1 - Computerization and information assembling process: nursing work and CPOE adoption T2 - Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium (IHI ’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Kai Zheng KW - CPOE KW - electronic medical records KW - health informatics KW - information access KW - information assembling KW - information system KW - medical informatics KW - personal sheet KW - shift change KW - working document AB -

This paper presents an ethnographic study investigating how nurses assemble information to start their shift’s work. We examined this process before and after the adoption of a Computerized Prescriber Order Entry (CPOE) system in an inpatient unit of a large teaching hospital. Before the CPOE adoption, nurses used several collaboratively-created group working documents to assist in this information assembling process; after the CPOE adoption, they mainly used the CPOE itself for their information needs. We found while computerization facilitated medical data assembling process and improved order handling practice, it also resulted in some information gaps in understanding patients in their larger care context. We analyzed what it means when the computerization of medical information turns local knowledge into more readily available and public information objects, as well as what that means for patients and patient care.

JF - Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium (IHI ’10) UR - Complete ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Designing Information to Facilitate Chronic Disease Management: Clinician-Patient Interactions in Diabetes Care T2 - Health Informatics: A Patient-Centered Approach to Diabetes Y1 - 2010 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Barbara Mirel ED - Barbara M. Hayes ED - William Aspray KW - diabetes KW - health communication KW - health informatics KW - information access KW - medical informatics KW - patient care KW - patient information KW - support groups AB -

This chapter examines the information needs of patients like the participants with diabetes in the observed group. This group of people had previously demonstrated receptivity to managing their diabetes for a productive life and lifestyle. As with a large proportion of patients with diabetes, however, sustaining this commitment was
difficult.

Similar to the complex needs of people with other chronic medical conditions, these patients’ sustained self-care was confounded by
multiple physiological conditions, emotional and psychological responses, social support needs, competing priorities, and varying
competences in communicating needs to the medical community (Klemm & Wheeler, 2005).  Although these patients did not need constant attention and help, and although they were self-motivated and almost entirely well educated, the information resources that are typically provided did not seem to work for them.

Through studying this particularly engaged and motivated group of longterm patients with diabetes, we were able to delineate critical problems that even engaged and motivated people trying to take care of a chronic disease necessarily face. Observing these participants, then, allowed us to see where standard information sources were lacking.

This chapter also explores what we need to understand better about content and framing in information exchanges to identify possible approaches for evoking patient responsiveness and for fostering a reflectivity-for-action that may have sustained results. As the care manager who led this group said, the purpose of the group was to provide information for future action.  Our analysis shows that these participants engaged in personalized information exchanges to understand the trade-offs and alternatives they faced.

JF - Health Informatics: A Patient-Centered Approach to Diabetes PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Doctors and Psychosocial Information: Records and Reuse in Inpatient Care T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Kai Zheng KW - EHR KW - electronic patient records KW - health informaticshealth informatics KW - information access KW - information reuse KW - medical information KW - medical records KW - organizational memory KW - physician information needs KW - psychosocial information AB -

We conducted a field-based study at a large teaching hospital to examine doctors’ use and documentation of patient care information, with a special focus on a patient’s psychosocial information. We were particularly interested in the gaps between the medical work and any representations of the patient. The paper describes how doctors record this information for immediate and long-term use. We found that doctors documented a considerable amount of psychosocial information in their electronic health records (EHR) system. Yet, we also observed that such information was recorded selectively, and a medicalized view-point is a key contributing factor. Our study shows how missing or problematic representations of a patient affect work activities and patient care. We accordingly suggest that EHR systems could be made more usable and useful in the long run, by supporting both representations of medical processes and of patients.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Progressive Scenarios: A Rapid Method for Understanding User Interpretations of Technology T2 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP ’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Huh, Jina A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Ayse G Büyüktür KW - ambiguity KW - multiple interpretations KW - pervasive KW - pervasive environments KW - scenario-based design KW - ubicomp KW - usercentered design AB -

For emerging group technologies that require evaluations on long-term use and social norms, assumptions, and implicit rules that develop around the technologies, standard usability testing may not be adequate. At the same time, field based research that allows for observing technology use over long-term is costly in terms of time. In this paper, we present a rapid method that we call progressive scenarios, which could help replicate the processes by which interpretations evolve over time in natural settings and how invisible assumptions and social norms dictate the technology use. Using a preliminary design concept of a publicly available ambient personal information and communication system, we demonstrate how the method helped to elicit design implications.

JF - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP ’10) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Social Regulation in an Online Game: Uncovering the Problematics of Code T2 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work (GROUP’10) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Jack Muramatsu A1 - McDonald, David W. KW - code KW - ethnography KW - games KW - online communities KW - police KW - social computing KW - social control KW - social interaction KW - social life KW - social regulation KW - socio-technical design KW - software infrastructure KW - user study KW - virtual communities AB -

More and more interaction is becoming code-based. Indeed, in online worlds, it is all there is. If software is providing a new basis for social interaction, then changing the infrastructure of interaction may necessarily change social interaction in important ways. As such, it is critical to understand the implications of code - we want to know what the use of code means for socio-technical design. In this paper, based on an ethnographic study of an online game, we examine social regulation in an online game world as a case study of socio-technical design using code. We wanted to know how changing interaction based in code conditioned use in our site. We found that code changed social regulation in three specific ways. First, code made some user actions that were socially unwanted to be immediately visible. Second, code could prevent some actions from occurring or punish users immediately. Finally, software was not able to see all action. Some user actions were too nuanced or subtle for code to catch; others were too ambiguous to place into code. Following Agre, we argue i that a "grammar of action" resulting from the use of code limits the kinds of behaviors that can be seen and dealt with. These findings suggest that there is more than just a gap between the social world and technical capabilities. There are new possibilities, tradeoffs, and limitations that must be considered in socio-technical design, and all come simultaneously.

JF - Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Supporting group work (GROUP’10) SN - 978-1-4503-0387-3 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Contribution, Commercialization & Audience: Understanding Participation in an Online Creative Community T2 - ACM Group 2009 Y1 - 2009 A1 - Eric Cook A1 - Stephanie D. Teasley A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - amateurs KW - audiences KW - commercialization KW - community of practice KW - creativity KW - learning KW - online communities KW - online community KW - professionals KW - social computing KW - user-generated content AB -

This paper presents a qualitative study of attitudes towards participation and contribution in an online creative community. The setting of the work is an online community of practice focused on the use and development of a user-customizable music software package called Reaktor. Findings from the study highlight four emergent topics in the discourse related to user contributions to the community: contribution assessment, support for learning, perceptions of audience and tensions about commercialization. Our analysis of these topics frames discussion about the value and challenges of attending to amateur and professional users in online creative communities.

JF - ACM Group 2009 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - I just don't know why it's gone: Maintaining Informal Information Use in Inpatient Care T2 - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09) Y1 - 2009 A1 - Xiaomu Zhou A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Kai Zheng KW - CPOE KW - electronic patient records KW - informal information KW - medical informatics. KW - medical records KW - organizational memory KW - psychosocial information KW - shift change AB -

We conducted a field-based study examining informal nursing information. We examined the use of this information before and after the adoption of a CPOE (Computerized Provider Order Entry) system in an inpatient unit of a large teaching hospital. Before CPOE adoption,
nurses used paper working documents to detail psychosocial information about patients; after the CPOE adoption, they did not use paper or digital notes as was planned. The paper describes this process and analyses how several interlocked reasons contributed to the loss of this information in written form. We found that a change in physical location, sufficient convenience, visibility of the information, and permanency of information account for some, but not all, of the outcome. As well, we found that computerization of the nursing data led to a shift in the politics of the information itself – the nurses no longer had a cohesive agreement about the kinds of data to enter into the system. The findings address the requirements of healthcare computerization to support both formal and informal work practices, respecting the nature of nursing work and the politics of information inherent in complex medical work.

JF - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Questions in, Knowledge iN? A study of Naver’s Question Answering Community T2 - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’09) Y1 - 2009 A1 - Kevin K. Nam A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic KW - collective help KW - expertise finding KW - information access KW - online communities KW - Q&A communities KW - QA KW - question-answering KW - social computing AB -

Large general-purposed community question-answering sites are becoming popular as a new venue for generating knowledge and helping users in their information needs. In this paper we analyze the characteristics of knowledge generation and user participation behavior in the largest question-answering online community in South Korea, Naver Knowledge-iN. We collected and analyzed over 2.6 million question/answer pairs from fifteen categories between 2002 and 2007, and have interviewed twenty six users to gain insights into their motivations,roles, usage and expertise. We find altruism, learning, and competency are frequent motivations for top answerers to participate, but that participation is often highly intermittent. Using a simple measure of user performance, we find that higher levels of participation correlate with better performance. We also observe that users are motivated in part through a point system to build a comprehensive knowledge database. These and other insights have significant implications for future knowledge generating online communities.

JF - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’09) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Sharing Map Annotations in Small Groups: X Marks the Spot T2 - Interact 2009 Y1 - 2009 A1 - Congleton, Ben A1 - Frank, Jackie Cerretani A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - expertise sharing KW - location-based computing KW - map annotation KW - peer production KW - requirements analysis KW - sharing KW - social media AB -

Advances in location-sensing technology, coupled with an increasingly pervasive wireless Internet, have made it possible (and increasingly easy) to access and share information with context of one’s geospatial location. We conducted a four-phase study, with 27 students, to explore the practices surrounding the creation, interpretation and sharing of map annotations in specific social contexts. We found that annotation authors consider multiple factors when deciding how to annotate maps, including the perceived utility to the audience and how their contributions will reflect on the image they project to others. Consumers of annotations value the novelty of information, but must be convinced of the author’s credibility. In this paper we describe our study, present the results, and discuss implications for the design of software for sharing map annotations.

JF - Interact 2009 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Simplifying User-Controlled Privacy Policies JF - IEEE Pervasive Computing Y1 - 2009 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Tao Dong A1 - Gifford, Scott A1 - Kim, Jungwoo A1 - Mark W. Newman A1 - Atul Prakash A1 - Qidwai, Sarah KW - location-aware computing KW - location-based computing KW - privacy KW - privacy-enhancing architectures KW - privacy-protective applications AB -

Location-aware computing infrastructures are becoming widely available.

However, a key problem remains: letting users manage their privacy while

also giving them interesting applications that take advantage of location

information.

VL - 8 UR - Complete IS - 4 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Competing to Share Expertise: The Taskcn Knowledge Sharing Community. T2 - ICWSM Y1 - 2008 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - competitions KW - e-commerce KW - e-communities KW - marketplaces KW - online communities KW - participation structures AB -

"Witkeys" are websites in China that form a rapidly growing web-based knowledge market. A user who posts a task also offers a small fee, and many other users submit their answers to compete. The Witkey sites fall in-between aspects of the now-defunct Google Answers (vetted experts answer questions for a fee) and Yahoo Answers (anyone can answer or ask a question). As such, these sites promise new possibilities for knowledge-sharing online communities, perhaps fostering the freelance marketplace of the future. In this paper, we investigate one of the biggest Witkey websites in China, Taskcn.com. In particular, we apply social network prestige measures to a novel construction of user and task networks based on competitive outcomes to discover the underlying properties of both users and tasks. Our results demonstrate the power of this approach: Our analysis allows us to infer relative expertise of the users and provides an understanding of the participation structure in Taskcn. The results suggest challenges and opportunities for this kind of knowledge sharing medium.

JF - ICWSM UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Crowdsourcing and Knowledge Sharing: Strategic User Behavior on Taskcn T2 - Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce Y1 - 2008 A1 - Jiang Yang A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - contests KW - crowdsourcing KW - e-commerce KW - knowledge market KW - learning KW - online communities KW - question-answer sites KW - virtual communities KW - witkey AB -

Witkeys are a thriving type of web-based knowledge sharing market in China, supporting a form of crowdsourcing. In a Witkey site, users offer a small award for a solution to a task, and other users compete to have their solution selected.

In this paper, we examine the behavior of users on one of the biggest Witkey websites in China, Taskcn.com. On Taskcn, we observed several characteristics in users' activity over time. Most users become inactive after only a few submissions. Others keep attempting tasks. Over time, users tend to select tasks where they are competing against fewer opponents to increase their chances of winning. They will also, perhaps counterproductively, select tasks with higher expected rewards. Yet, on average, they do not increase their chances of winning, and in some categories of tasks, their chances actually decrease. This does not paint the full picture, however, because there is a very small core of successful users who manage not only to win multiple tasks, but to increase their win-to-submission ratio over time. This core group proposes nearly 20% of the winning solutions on the site. The patterns we observe on Taskcn, we believe, hold clues to the future of crowdsourcing and freelance marketplaces, and raise interesting design implications for such sites.

JF - Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce PB - ACM CY - New York, NY, USA SN - 978-1-60558-169-9 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something T2 - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web Y1 - 2008 A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Zhang, Jun A1 - Bakshy, Eytan A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - expertise finding KW - expertise sharing KW - help seeking KW - knowledge sharing KW - online communities KW - Q&A communities KW - QA communities KW - question answering KW - social network analysis AB -

Yahoo Answers (YA) is a large and diverse question-answer forum, acting not only as a medium for sharing technical knowledge, but as a place where one can seek advice, gather opinions, and satisfy one's curiosity about a countless number of things. In this paper, we seek to understand YA's knowledge sharing and activity. We analyze the forum categories and cluster them according to content characteristics and patterns of interaction among the users. While interactions in some categories resemble expertise sharing forums, others incorporate discussion, everyday advice, and support. With such a diversity of categories in which one can participate, we find that some users focus narrowly on specific topics, while others participate across categories. This not only allows us to map related categories, but to characterize the entropy of the users' interests. We find that lower entropy correlates with receiving higher answer ratings, but only for categories where factual expertise is primarily sought after. We combine both user attributes and answer characteristics to predict, within a given category, whether a particular answer will be chosen as the best answer by the asker.

JF - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web UR - Complete ER - TY - CHAP T1 - The national virtual observatory T2 - Scientific collaboration on the Internet Y1 - 2008 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Hofer, Erik C A1 - Hanisch, Robert J ED - Olson, Gary M ED - Zimmerman, Ann ED - Bos, Nathan KW - astronomy KW - big data KW - cyberinfrastructure AB -

Like many scientific communities, the astronomy community faces a coming avalanche of data as instrumentation improves in quality as well as in its ability to integrate with computational and data resources. Unlike scientific fields that are oriented around a small number of major instruments, such as high-energy physics, astronomers use a large number of telescopes located around the world that are designed and calibrated to look at celestial objects in fundamentally different ways. Both space and terrestrial telescopes are designed to observe objects across a narrow part of the energy spectrum, typically focusing on a small part of the spectrum from the infrared to X-ray wavelengths. While each telescope has the potential to reveal and characterize new astronomical objects, even more powerful would be the ability to combine the data produced by each of these instruments to create a unified picture of the observable universe. This data fusion requires federating a large number of data sets, and developing the search and analysis routines that allow investigation across multiple wavelengths.

The National Virtual Observatory (NVO) project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide the cyberinfrastructure necessary to support the federation of a large number of astronomical data sets, allowing search across multiple data sets and the development of simulations that incorporate many types of astronomical data. Through the development of tools and standardized data models, the NVO hopes to enable the combination of multiple pointed-observation telescopes and sky surveys into a large, unified data set that effectively functions as a broadband, worldwide telescope. The NVO is part of a larger effort, known as the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), to support data federation and exchange across a number of national and regional virtual observatories.

JF - Scientific collaboration on the Internet PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA ER - TY - CHAP T1 - The politics of design: Next generation computational environments T2 - Computerization movements and technology diffusion: From mainframes to ubiquitous computing Y1 - 2008 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman ED - Margaret S Elliott ED - Kraemer, Kenneth L KW - pervasive KW - Semantic Web KW - socio-technical KW - socio-technical design KW - socio-technical evolution KW - ubicomp AB -

This paper describes and analyzes two next-generation computational environments and their architectures: the Semantic Web and pervasive computing. Each of these necessarily carries with it political assumptions about how the environments will be used, and these political assumptions are reflected in the accompanying computerization movement’s rhetoric. However, unlike "first growth" computerization efforts, both the Semantic Web and pervasive computing will result within a growing infrastructure that does not allow topdown design (or even overall design) but within which new designs must fit. The underlying assumptions for both environments are largely libertarian but with differing modalities of user control. This paper examines the libertarian assumptions, the promise of democratization in one but not the other, and the resulting conceptual tensions surrounding these two second-generation computerization movements.

JF - Computerization movements and technology diffusion: From mainframes to ubiquitous computing PB - Information Today CY - New York UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - The ProD Framework for Proactive Displays T2 - Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'08) Y1 - 2008 A1 - Congleton, Ben A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mark W. Newman KW - audience-awareness KW - awareness KW - collaborative systems KW - pervasive computing KW - proactive displays KW - public displays KW - software framework KW - ubiquitous computing AB -

A proactive display is an application that selects content to display based on the set of users who have been detected nearby. For example, the Ticket2Talk [17] proactive display application presented content for users so that other people would know something about them. It is our view that promising patterns for proactive display applications have been discovered, and now we face the need for frameworks to support the range of applications

that are possible in this design space.

In this paper, we present the Proactive Display (ProD)

Framework, which allows for the easy construction of proactive

display applications. It allows a range of proactive

display applications, including ones already in the literature.

ProD also enlarges the design space of proactive display

systems by allowing a variety of new applications that

incorporate different views of social life and community.

JF - Proceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'08) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Researching telemedicine: Capturing complex clinical interactions with a simple interface design JF - Technical communication quarterly Y1 - 2008 A1 - Barbara Mirel A1 - Barton, Ellen A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - depression monitoring KW - patient-clinician communication KW - telemedicine AB -

Telemedicine has been shown to be an effective means of managing follow-up care in chronic diseases such as depression. Exactly why telemedicine calls work, however, remains largely unknown because there are no adequate research tools to describe the complex communicative interactions in these encounters. We report here an ongoing project to investigate the efficacy of telemedicine in depression care, arguing that technical communication specialists have unique contributions to make to this kind of research.

VL - 17 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Arkose: Reusing Informal Information in Online Communities T2 - ACM Group 2007 Conference Y1 - 2007 A1 - Kevin K. Nam A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - Arkose KW - collaborative distillation KW - collective help applications KW - community knowledge KW - design rationale KW - iDiag KW - incremental formalization KW - information access KW - information distillation KW - information organization KW - information reuse KW - knowledge communities KW - knowledge management KW - online communities AB -

Online discussions such as a large-scale community brainstorming often end up with an unorganized bramble of ideas and topics that are difficult to reuse. A process of distillation is needed to boil down a large information space into information that is concise and organized. We take a system-augmented approach to the problem by creating a set of tools with which human editors can collaboratively distill a large amount of informal information.

Two design principles, which we will define as incremental diagenesis and incremental summarization, help editors flexibly distill the informal information. Our system, Arkose, is built as a demonstration of these principles, providing the necessary tools for distillation. These tools include a number of visualization and information retrieval mechanisms, as well as an authoring tool and a navigator for the information space. They support a gradual increase in the order and reusability of the information space and allow various levels of intermediate states of a distillation.

JF - ACM Group 2007 Conference UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Beyond Boundary Objects: Collaborative Reuse in Aircraft Technical Support JF - Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing Y1 - 2007 A1 - Wayne G Lutters A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - boundary objects KW - collaborative work KW - expertise sharing KW - high reliability organizations KW - hotlines KW - information reuse KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory KW - safety KW - service engineering KW - technical support AB -

Boundary objects are a critical, but understudied, theoretical construct in CSCW. Through a field study of aircraft technical support, we examined the role of boundary objects in the practical achievement of safety by service engineers. Their resolution of repair requests was preserved in the organization’s memory via three compound boundary objects. These crystallizations did not manifest a static interpretation, but instead were continually reinterpreted in light of meta-negotiations. This suggests design implications for organizational memory systems which can more fluidly represent the meta-negotiations surrounding boundary objects.

VL - 16 UR - Complete IS - 3 ER - TY - CONF T1 - CommunityNetSimulator: Using simulations to study online community networks T2 - Communities and Technologies 2007 Y1 - 2007 A1 - Zhang, Jun A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic KW - community dynamics KW - community strucure KW - incentive structures KW - online communities KW - Q&A communities KW - QA communities KW - reward structures KW - simulation AB -

Help-seeking communities have been playing an increasingly critical role the way people seek and share information online, forming the basis for knowledge dissemination and accumulation. Consider:

❑ About.com, a popular help site (http://about.com), boasts 30 million distinct users each month

❑ Knowledge-iN, a Korean site (http://kin.naver.com/), has accumulated 1.5 million question and answers.

Many additional sites exist from online stock trading discussions to medicaladvice communities. These range from simple text-based newsgroups to intricate immersive virtual reality multi-user worlds. Unfortunately, the very size of these communities may impede an individual’s ability to find relevant answers or advice. Which replies were written by experts and which by novices? As these help-seeking communities are also often primitive technically, they often cannot help the user distinguish between e.g. expert and novice advice. We would therefore like to find mechanisms to augment their functionality and social life. Research is proceeding to make use of the available structure in online communities to design new systems and  algorithms (e.g., [4], [10]). These are largely focused on social network characteristics of these communities.

However, differing network structures and dynamics will affect possible algorithms that attempt to make use of these networks, but little is known of these impacts.

Accordingly, we developed a CommunityNetSimulator (CNS), a simulator that combines various network models, as well as various new social network analysis techniques that are useful to study online community (or virtual organization) network formation and dynamics.

JF - Communities and Technologies 2007 PB - Springer UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Expertise networks in online communities: structure and algorithms T2 - Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web (WWW'07) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Zhang, Jun A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic KW - expert locators KW - expertise finding KW - help seeking KW - online communities KW - simulation KW - social network analysis AB -

Web-based communities have become important places for people to seek and share expertise. We find that networks in these communities typically differ in their topology from other online networks such as the World Wide Web. Systems targeted to augment web-based communities by automatically identifying users with expertise, for example, need to adapt to the underlying interaction dynamics. In this study, we analyze the Java Forum, a large online help-seeking community, using social network analysis methods. We test a set of network-based ranking algorithms, including PageRank and HITS, on this large size social network in order to identify users with high expertise. We then use simulations to identify a small number of simple simulation rules governing the question-answer dynamic in the network. These simple rules not only replicate the structural characteristics and algorithm performance on the empirically observed Java Forum, but also allow us to evaluate how other algorithms may perform in communities with different characteristics. We believe this approach will be fruitful for practical algorithm design and implementation for online expertise-sharing communities.
 

JF - Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web (WWW'07) PB - ACM UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Knowledge Work Artifacts: Kernel Cousins for Free/Open Source Software Development T2 - Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (Group'07) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Margaret S Elliott A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Scacchi, Walt KW - F/OSS KW - free/open software systems KW - knowledge artifacts KW - knowledge management KW - online discussions KW - software engineering AB -

Most empirical studies of peer production have focused on the final products of these efforts (such as software in Free/Open Source projects), but there are also many other knowledge artifacts that improve the effectiveness of the project. This paper presents a study of an intermediate work product, or informalism, used in a Free/Open Source Software project, GNUe. A digest-like artifact called the Kernel Cousin (KC) was used extensively in the project. These KCs allowed critical coordination and memory, but at the cost of considerable effort. The paper presents two examples of the KCs' use in the project as well as an analysis of their benefits and costs.

JF - Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (Group'07) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - QuME: A Mechanism to Support Expertise Finding in Online Help-seeking Communities T2 - Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'07) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Zhang, Jun A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Lada A. Adamic A1 - Kevin K. Nam KW - cscw KW - expertise finding KW - expertise location KW - social networks AB -

Help-seeking communities have been playing an increasingly critical role in the way people seek and share information. However, traditional help-seeking mechanisms of these online communities have some limitations. In this paper, we describe an expertise-finding mechanism that attempts to alleviate the limitations caused by not knowing users' expertise levels. As a result of using social network data from the online community, this mechanism can automatically infer expertise level. This allows, for example, a question list to be personalized to the user's expertise level as well as to keyword similarity. We believe this expertise location mechanism will facilitate the development of next generation help-seeking communities.

JF - Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'07) UR - Complete ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Resources, co-evolution and artifacts: Theory in CSCW Y1 - 2007 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Christine A Halverson A1 - Erickson, Thomas A1 - Kellogg, Wendy A KW - co-evolution KW - CSCW theory KW - resource AB -

How do software and other technical systems come to be adopted and used?

People use software and other technical systems in many ways, and a considerable amount of time and energy may be spent integrating the functionality of the system with the everyday activities it is intended to support. Understanding how this comes about, and understanding how to design systems so that it happens more easily, is a topic of great interest to the CSCW, IT and IS communities.

Resources, Co-Evolution and Artifacts: Theory in CSCW approaches this problem by looking at resources - artifacts that have come to be used in a particular manner in a given situation - and examining how they get created, adopted, modified, and abandoned. The theoretical and empirical studies in this volume examine issues such as:

- how resources are tailored or otherwise changed as situations change;

- how a resource is maintained and reused within an organization;

- the ways in which the value of a resource comes to be understood;

- the ways in which an artifact is transformed to function more effectively;

- how one might approach the problem of designing a resource de novo.

PB - Springer CY - New York UR - NoFile ER - TY - CONF T1 - Virtual community maintenance with a collaborative repository T2 - Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting (ASIST'07) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Hansen, Derek L A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Resnick, Paul J A1 - Munson, Sean KW - answer repository KW - expertise sharing KW - knowledge distillation KW - online communities KW - Q&A communities KW - QA AB -

Virtual communities, like all communities, require ongoing community maintenance activities. This paper presents an empirical study examining how a wiki repository was used to help overcome some of the community maintenance challenges common to help-based email list discussions. Specifically, we found that inclusion of off-topic but related content on the wiki enabled list members to keep the discussion on-topic while still addressing the needs of members. Offloading of repetitive and potentially contentious “holy war” debates to the wiki encouraged list members to summarize their arguments into a meaningful information product. The community's use of the wiki in helping answer frequently asked questions helped attract new members and helped them gain the knowledge they needed to comfortably contribute to the email list. It also helped active participants answer questions more efficiently and effectively by supporting the reuse of information. Finally, the wiki supported peripheral participation by new and former members. This study demonstrates that the architecture of information collections and information flows in an online community has a significant impact on the social processes related to community maintenance.

JF - Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting (ASIST'07) UR - MISSING_URL_KEYWORDS ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Group information management T2 - Personal Information Management Y1 - 2006 A1 - Wayne G Lutters A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Xiaomu Zhou ED - Jones, William P. ED - Jaime Teevan KW - group information KW - personal information management AB -

 

 

Activities of PIM are often embedded in group or organizational contexts. To work effectively within a group, an individual must manage information not only for his or her personal use but also to share with other members of the group. Obviously, one would like to leverage the activities of others around. Being able to obtain telephone numbers, schedule group meetings, determine the availability of one’s peers, and obtain important collaborative information is invaluable. What are the issues, if any, in leveraging the work of others, in order to incorporate their calendar, contacts, and other information into one’s own PIM system? And what would be involved in sharing one’s own data for use by others? 

This chapter reviews the host of issues involved in the collaborative use of personal information. Topics covered include motivation, adoption patterns, interaction styles, control over personal information, privacy, and trust. The goal is to facilitate sharing personal information by considering these issues; fully considered, they can enable the cooperative adoption and use of tools to support group information management (GIM). 

JF - Personal Information Management PB - University of Washington Press CY - Seattle, WA UR - Complete ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Privacy Issues and Human-Computer Interaction T2 - Security and usability: designing secure systems that people can use Y1 - 2005 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Scott D. Mainwaring ED - Cranor, Lorrie Faith ED - Garfinkel, Simson KW - privacy AB -

 This chapter will largely view HCI in its broader context. HCI is not just about user interfaces but also about the user experience  of systems: how people perceive and understand, reason and learn about, and react and adapt to digital technologies. To borrow the terminology Sasse and Flechais2  use in discussing security, HCI has come to deal not only with process  (how systems are used, designed, and developed) and product  (the systems themselves and their interfaces), but also panorama  (cultural and organizational contexts that support, discourage, or otherwise shape the systems they envelope). Privacy, like security, implicates all of these levels. It is by its nature both a question of the user and his or her data but also the user and others’ use of that data. Our interests, therefore, will be those of HCI-writ-large.

While HCI has gone through several generations of computational technologies, it has carried a number of research themes forward. As mentioned, this chapter will consider the various HCI themes and their research findings that may be important when designing, constructing, or evaluating privacy mechanisms. Before exploring these HCI research streams, however, we first need a working definition of privacy, and to compare and contrast privacy concerns with HCI concerns.

JF - Security and usability: designing secure systems that people can use PB - O'Reilly Media CY - Cambridge, MA ER - TY - CONF T1 - Searching for Expertise in Social Networks: A Simulation of Potential Strategies T2 - Proceedings of the 2005 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (Group'05) Y1 - 2005 A1 - Zhang, Jun A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - expertise finding KW - expertise location KW - expertise sharing KW - information seeking KW - organizational simulations KW - social computing KW - social networks AB -

People search for people with suitable expertise all of the time in their social networks - to answer questions or provide help. Recently, efforts have been made to augment this searching. However, relatively little is known about the social characteristics of various algorithms that might be useful. In this paper, we examine three families of searching strategies that we believe may be useful in expertise location. We do so through a simulation, based on the Enron email data set. (We would be unable to suitably experiment in a real organization, thus our need for a simulation.) Our emphasis is not on graph theoretical concerns, but on the social characteristics involved. The goal is to understand the tradeoffs involved in the design of social network based searching engines.
 

JF - Proceedings of the 2005 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (Group'05) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Behind the Help Desk: Evolution of a Knowledge Management System in a Large Organization T2 - Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'04) Y1 - 2004 A1 - Christine A Halverson A1 - Erickson, Thomas A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - design approaches KW - distributed cognition KW - ethnography KW - FAQ KW - frequently asked questions KW - help desk AB -

This paper examines the way in which a knowledge management system (KMS)-by which we mean the people, processes and software-came into being and evolved in response to a variety of shifting social, technical and organizational pressures. We draw upon data from a two year ethnographic study of a sophisticated help desk to trace the KMS from its initial conception as a "Common Problems" database for help desk personnel, to its current instantiation as a set of Frequently Asked Questions published on an intranet for help desk clients. We note how shifts in management, organizational structure, incentives, software technologies, and other factors affected the development of the system. This study sheds light on some of the difficulties that accompany the implementation of CSCW systems, and provides an analysis of how such systems are often designed by bricolage.
 

JF - Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'04) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Organizational memory as objects, processes, and trajectories: An examination of organizational memory in use JF - Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Journal Y1 - 2004 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Christine A Halverson KW - boundary objects KW - collective memory KW - contextualization KW - corporate memory KW - distributed cognition KW - information reuse KW - knowledge management KW - memory reuse KW - organizational memory KW - trajectories of information AB -

For proper knowledge management, organizations must consider how knowledge is kept and reused. The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to only a few uses. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level, distributed cognition analysis of two hotline calls, the work activity surrounding the calls, and the memory used in the work activity. Drawing on the work of Star, Hutchins, and Strauss, the paper focuses on issues of applying past information for current use. Our work extends Strauss' and Hutchins' trajectories to get at the understanding of potential future use by participants and its role in current information storage. We also note the simultaneously shared provenance and governance of multiple memories – human and technical. This analysis and the theoretical framework we construct should be to be useful in further efforts in describing and analyzing organizational memory within the context of knowledge management efforts.

VL - 13 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - The Perfect Search Engine is Not Enough: A Study of Orienteering Behavior in Directed Search T2 - Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'04) Y1 - 2004 A1 - Jaime Teevan A1 - Alvarado, Christine A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - David R. Karger KW - context KW - information seeking KW - observational study KW - orienteering KW - search KW - teleporting AB -

This paper presents a modified diary study that investigated how people performed personally motivated searches in their email, in their files, and on the Web. Although earlier studies of directed search focused on keyword search, most of the search behavior we observed did not involve keyword search. Instead of jumping directly to their information target using keywords, our participants navigated to their target with small, local steps using their contextual knowledge as a guide, even when they knew exactly what they were looking for in advance. This stepping behavior was especially common for participants with unstructured information organization. The observed advantages of searching by taking small steps include that it allowed users to specify less of their information need and provided a context in which to understand their results. We discuss the implications of such advantages for the design of personal information management tools.
 

JF - Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'04) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Privacy in pervasive environments: next generation labeling protocols JF - Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Y1 - 2004 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - labeling protocols KW - P3P KW - pervasive environments KW - platform for privacy preferences KW - privacy KW - ubiquitous computing AB -

In pervasive environments, privacy is likely to be a major issue for users, and users will want to be notified of potential data capture. To provide notice to users, this paper argues for what it calls labeling protocols, technical mechanisms through which users can be informed of data requests and their consequences. Recent experiences with the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P), an attempt to provide privacy mechanisms for the Web, suggest important lessons for the design of a next generation labeling protocol that will be usable and useful in pervasive environments. This paper examines the P3P lessons and open issues with an eye to pervasive requirements.
 

VL - 8 UR - Complete ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Social regulation of online multiplayer games Y1 - 2004 A1 - Jack Muramatsu KW - e-communities KW - game communities KW - game worlds KW - MUDs KW - online communities KW - social regulation AB -

Social regulation of user behavior is a key aspect of the community maintenance required to ensure the continued success and well-being of virtual worlds as “Third Places” (Oldenburg, 1989). Accordingly, this dissertation focuses on social regulation within two fantasy-based game MUDs (Multi-user Dungeons) which will be referred to as Illusion and Odyssey. Briefly, social regulation can be defined as “social arrangements employed to keep the behavior of some people in line with the expectations of others” (Hewitt and Hewitt, 1996). One key focus of the work is on providing an ethnographic account of the work performed by the games' administrators, immortals, in order to regulate player behavior. Immortals were observed to use both situated and typified reasoning in order to evaluate situations in a tractable and manageable manner. Such evaluation differs between virtual and physical spaces with respect to both the fluidity of identity and the visibility of information cues.

The second key focus of this work is on the role of software code in regulating behavior. On the two studied systems, code is not merely used as a passive tool by the immortals in the form of specialized commands to monitor player behavior and issue punishments but it also plays a much more active, autonomous role. Both systems utilize specialized software routines that automatically enforce restrictions on behavior that were previously enforced by the immortals. Such code serves as the active agent of regulation by continuously monitoring behavior within the game world and taking regulatory action accordingly. The analysis of the use of coded rules for regulation focuses on differences in the ways in which immortals and coded rules perform regulation. These differences rest primarily in the range and type of information cues used; code was observed to use a narrow set of cues, while immortals considered a much wider set of cues including issues of intent and extenuating circumstances.

In summary, this dissertation presents a detailed account of the regulatory work performed directly by system administrators and by autonomous code so that virtual “third places” might continue to thrive and prosper.

PB - University of California, Irvine, PhD Thesis UR - Thesis ER - TY - CONF T1 - I-DIAG: from community discussion to knowledge distillation T2 - Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003) Y1 - 2003 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Swenson, Anne A1 - Cotterill, Stephen A1 - DeMaagd, Kurtis KW - distillation KW - expertise sharing KW - forums KW - knowledge artifact KW - knowledge management KW - knowledge sharing KW - online communities AB -

I-DIAG is an attempt to understand how to take the collective discussions of a large group of people and distill the messages and documents into more succinct, durable knowledge. I-DIAG is a distributed environment that includes two separate applications, CyberForum and Consolidate. The goals of the project, the architecture of IDIAG, and the two applications are described. We focus on technical mechanisms to augment social maintenance and social regulation in the system.

JF - Communities and Technologies (C&T 2003) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Joining the backstage: locality and centrality in an online community JF - Information Technology & People Y1 - 2003 A1 - Lutters, Wayne G A1 - Ackerman, Mark S KW - dialup KW - e-community KW - fan community KW - geographically co-located community KW - online community KW - virtual community KW - webboard AB - The design of viable, small‐scale community spaces on the Net is often a hit‐or‐miss affair. To better understand promising approaches in this design space, it is necessary to go back in time to examine an earlier community technology. A field study is presented of The Castle, a dial‐up bulletin board system, that focuses on Disneyland. As a “gathering place for Disney enthusiasts”, The Castle is a fascinating, albeit eccentric, online community. The Castle's centrality in the fans’ interest network allows it to function as a collecting point. Here people find similar enthusiasts and even those with insider knowledge. Yet, because of the cost structure of dial‐up access (an accidental side‐effect of the technology), participants are overwhelmingly geographically local, which has useful consequences for social maintenance. It is argued that the geographical locality and centrality of interest allow The Castle to thrive. Most importantly, however, the combination of the two together creates a powerful social dynamic which has been lost in most contemporary online communities.

VL - 16 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - "Yeah, the Rush Ain'T Here Yet " Take a Break": Creation and Use of an Artifact As Organizational Memory T2 - Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'03) Y1 - 2003 A1 - Christine A Halverson A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - dcog KW - distributed cognition KW - expertise sharing KW - information maintenance KW - information reuse KW - knowledge artifacts KW - resource evolution KW - socio-technical resources KW - trajectories of use AB -

important to understand how things become adopted as memory resources in organizations. In this paper, we describe the genesis and use of an artifact that became a memory resource for a wide range of activities. We discuss how the creation and use of the rush cheat sheet (RCS) and its associated representations at Dallas Ft. Worth TRACON brought together information and expert knowledge across organizational boundaries. Multiorganizational information became synthesized in a composite that could be used as a resource by the contributing organizations, acting as a boundary object. However, it is multiple representations of the same data that enable it to be so used. Using distributed cognition theory, we examined the conditions under which data transforms from an internal resource to a boundary object; speculating about domain generalization.

JF - Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'03) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Achieving Safety: A Field Study of Boundary Objects in Aircraft Technical Support T2 - Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'02) Y1 - 2002 A1 - Lutters, Wayne G. A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - boundary objects KW - collaborative work KW - expertise sharing KW - high reliability organizations KW - hotlines KW - information reuse KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory KW - safety KW - service engineering KW - technical support AB -

Boundary objects are a critical, but understudied, theoretical construct in CSCW. Through a field study of aircraft technical support, we examined the role of boundary objects in the “achievement of safety” by service engineers. The resolution process of repair requests was captured in two compound boundary objects. These crystallizations did not manifest a static interpretation, but instead were continually reinterpreted in light of meta-negotiations. This suggests design implications for organizational memory systems which can more fluidly represent the meta-negotiations surrounding boundary objects.

JF - Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'02) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Privacy in context JF - Human–Computer Interaction Y1 - 2001 A1 - Ackerman, Mark A1 - Darrell, Trevor A1 - Weitzner, Daniel J KW - IoT privacy KW - organizational context KW - pervasive KW - privacy KW - social context KW - ubicomp AB - Context-aware computing offers the promise of significant user gains-the ability for systems to adapt more readily to user needs, models, and goals. Dey, Abowd, and Salber (2001) present a masterful step toward understanding context-aware applications. We examine Dey et al. in the light of privacy issues-that is, individuals' control over their personal data-to highlight some of the thorny issues in context-aware computing that will be upon us soon. We argue that privacy in context-aware computing, especially those with perceptually aware environments, will be quite complex. Indeed, privacy forms a co-design space between the social, the technical, and the regulatory. We recognize that Dey et al. is a necessary first step in examining important software engineering concerns, but future research will need to consider how regulatory and technical solutions might be co-designed to form a public good. VL - 16 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Beyond concern: Understanding net users' attitudes about online privacy JF - The Internet upheaval: raising questions, seeking answers in communications policy Y1 - 2000 A1 - Cranor, Lorrie Faith A1 - Reagle, Joseph A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - net users KW - online environment KW - online privacy KW - personal information KW - privacy KW - survey AB -

Over the past decade, numerous surveys conducted around the world have found consistently high levels of concern about privacy. The more recent studies have found that this concern is as prevalent in the online environment as it is for physical-world interactions. For example, Westin (Harris 1998) found 81% of Net users are concerned about threats to their privacy while online. While many studies have measured the magnitude of privacy concerns, it is still critical to study the concern in detail, especially for the online environment. As Hine and Eve (1998) point out: Despite this wide range of interests in privacy as a topic, we have little idea of the ways in which people in their ordinary lives conceive of privacy and their reactions to the collection and use of personal information (Hine and Eve 1998, 253) With this study, we have tried to better understand the nature of online privacy concerns.

UR - Complete-New ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Collaborative support for informal information in collective memory systems JF - Information Systems Frontiers Y1 - 2000 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Mcdonald, David W KW - CMC KW - collaborative help KW - community memory KW - computer-mediated communications KW - corporate memory KW - cscw KW - expertise sharing KW - group memory KW - help KW - incremental formalization KW - informal information KW - information access KW - information refining KW - information retrieval KW - information systems KW - knowledge shairng KW - organizational memory KW - system AB -

Informal information, such as the expertise of an organization or the workarounds practiced by a community, is a critical part of organizational or collective memory systems. From a user-centered perspective, a user merely wishes to get his work done, and to do this, he must solve his immediate problems. We have examined how to incorporate this problem solving into a collective memory, as well as how to incorporate the learning that accrues to it or from it. We report here on two systems, the Cafe ConstructionKit and the Collaborative Refinery, as well as an application, Answer Garden 2, built using these two systems. The Cafe ConstructionKit provides toolkit mechanisms for incorporating communication flows among people (as well as agents) into an organizational memory framework, and the Collaborative Refinery system provides mechanisms for distilling and refining the informal information obtained through these communication flows. The Answer Garden 2 application demonstrates the utility of these two underlying systems.

VL - 2 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Expertise Recommender: A Flexible Recommendation System and Architecture T2 - Proceedings of the 2000 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'00) Y1 - 2000 A1 - McDonald, David W. A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - collaborative filtering KW - expert locators KW - expertise finding KW - expertise location KW - expertise sharing KW - information seeking KW - recommendation systems KW - software architecture AB -

Locating the expertise necessary to solve difficult problems is a nuanced social and collaborative problem. In organizations, some people assist others in locating expertise by making referrals. People who make referrals fill key organizational roles that have been identified by CSCW and affiliated research. Expertise locating systems are not designed to replace people who fill these key organizational roles. Instead, expertise locating systems attempt to decrease workload and support people who have no other options. Recommendation systems are collaborative software that can be applied to expertise locating. This work describes a general recommendation architecture that is grounded in a field study of expertise locating. Our expertise recommendation system details the work necessary to fit expertise recommendation to a work setting. The architecture and implementation begin to tease apart the technical aspects of providing good recommendations from social and collaborative concerns.

JF - Proceedings of the 2000 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'00) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - The intellectual challenge of CSCW: the gap between social requirements and technical feasibility JF - Human-computer interaction Y1 - 2000 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S KW - computer supported cooperative work KW - cscw KW - CSCW theory KW - social-technical gap KW - socio-technical gap AB -

Over the last 10 years, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a base set of findings. These findings are taken almost as assumptions within the field. In summary, they argue that human activity is highly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized and that computational entities such as information sharing, roles, and social norms need to be similarly flexible, nuanced, and contextualized. However, current systems cannot fully support the social world uncovered by these findings. In this article I argue that there is an inherent gap between the social requirements of CSCW and its technical mechanisms. The social-technical gap is the divide between what we know we must support socially and what we can support technically. Exploring, understanding, and hopefully ameliorating this social-technical gap is the central challenge for CSCW as a field and one of the central problems for human-computer interaction. Indeed, merely attesting the continued centrality of this gap could be one of the important intellectual contributions of CSCW. I also argue that the challenge of the social-technical gap creates an opportunity to refocus CSCW.

VL - 15 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Reexamining Organizational Memory JF - Communications of the ACM Y1 - 2000 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. A1 - Halverson, Christine A. KW - dcog KW - distributed cognition KW - distributed cognition theory KW - field study KW - organizational memory AB -

Reconceptualizing how an interpersonal memory—particularly one including people and technology—may be defined.

After nearly 10 years of research, “organizational memory” (OM) has become overworked and confused. Burdened by a practical wish to reuse organizational experience, researchers have often ignored critical functions of an organization’s memory in order to focus on only a few methods for augmenting memory. It is time for a reexamination.

In this article we step back and investigate where memory exists currently within an organizational setting, rather than focusing on potential technical enhancements. In order to accomplish this we study OM within a telephone helpline that answers human-resource questions at a well-established Silicon Valley company

VL - 43 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Memory in the small: Combining collective memory and task support for a scientific community JF - Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce Y1 - 1999 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Mandel, Eric KW - astrophysics KW - collaborative memory KW - community memory KW - data analysis KW - organizational memory KW - science community KW - scientific memory KW - system KW - UI visualizations AB -

Many forms of memory exist embedded within the processes and tasks of an organization or community. Memory in the small, or memory utilized in the performance of an institutionally important task, serves as an effective task support mechanism. By basing memory on tasks (and basing task support on memory), memory systems can provide additional and necessary support services for organizations and communities. As an example of memory in the small, in this article we describe a software system, called the ASSIST, that combines memory with task performance for a scientific community. The ASSIST utilizes and stores the collective memory of astrophysicists about data analysis, and is used worldwide by astrophysicists. In this article, we also consider the architectural and theoretical issues involved when combining memory with task performance.

VL - 9 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Organizational memory: processes, boundary objects, and trajectories T2 - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-32) Y1 - 1999 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Christine A Halverson KW - expertise sharing KW - hotlines KW - information reuse KW - information trajectories KW - organizational memory AB -

The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to only a few uses. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level, distributed cognition analysis of two hotline calls, the work activity surrounding the calls, and the memory used in the work activity. We find a number of interesting theoretical concepts that are useful in further describing and analyzing organizational memory.

JF - Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-32) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Privacy Critics: UI Components to Safeguard Users' Privacy T2 - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'99 Y1 - 1999 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Cranor, Lorrie KW - agent architectures KW - collaboration KW - critics KW - critics architecture KW - P3P KW - platform for privacy preferences KW - privacy KW - World Wide Web AB -

Creating usable systems to protect online privacy is an inherently difficult problem. Privacy critics are semiautonomous agents that help people protect their online privacy by offering suggestions and warnings. Two sample critics are presented.

JF - ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'99 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Privacy in e-Commerce: Examining User Scenarios and Privacy Preferences T2 - Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'99) Y1 - 1999 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Cranor, Lorrie Faith A1 - Reagle, Joseph KW - electronic commerce KW - platform for privacy preferences KW - privacy KW - privacy protocols KW - user survey KW - World Wide Web AB -

Privacy is a necessary concern in electronic commerce. It is difficult, if not impossible, to complete a transaction without revealing some personal data – a shipping address, billing information, or product preference. Users may be unwilling to provide this necessary information or even to browse online if they believe their privacy is invaded or threatened. Fortunately, there are technologies to help users protect their privacy. P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) from the World Wide Web Consortium is one such technology. However, there is a need to know more about the range of user concerns and preferences about privacy in order to build usable and effective interface mechanisms for P3P and other privacy technologies. Accordingly, we conducted a survey of 381 U.S. Net users, detailing a range of commerce scenarios and examining the participants' concerns and preferences about privacy. This paper presents both the findings from that study as well as their design implications

JF - Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC'99) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Augmenting Organizational Memory: A Field Study of Answer Garden JF - ACM Transactions on Information Ssystems Y1 - 1998 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - collective memory KW - community memory KW - field studies KW - group memory KW - organizational memory KW - system AB -

A growing concern for organizations and groups has been to augment their knowledge and expertise. One such augmentation is to provide an organizational memory, some record of the organization's knowledge. However, relatively little is known about how computer systems might enhance organizational, group, or community memory. This article presents Answer Garden, a system for growing organizational memory. The article describes the system and its underlying implementation. It then presents findings from a field study of Answer Garden. The article discusses the usage data and qualitative evaluations from the field study, and then draws a set of lessons for next-generation organizational memory systems.

VL - 16 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Computing, social activity, and entertainment: A field study of a game MUD JF - Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Y1 - 1998 A1 - Muramatsu, Jack A1 - Ackerman, Mark S KW - combat MUDs KW - entertainment KW - games KW - MUDs KW - online communities KW - participant-observation KW - play KW - social worlds KW - system design AB -

Are game and entertainment systems different than work-oriented systems? What drives the user's experience in a collaborative game? To answer these questions, we performed a participant-observation study of a combat MUD, a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. Our interest is in how this social world is arranged and managed (rather than, for example, in how participants form or display individual identities). The study explores the social arrangements and activities that give meaning and structure to the participants. We found that conflict and cooperation were the dominant social activities on this MUD, much more so than sociability. The game's management played a critical function in maintaining and promoting these activities. Moreover, novelty and entertainment were important for the design of both the system features and the sociality itself.

VL - 7 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Considering an Organization's Memory T2 - Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'98) Y1 - 1998 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Christine A Halverson KW - collective memory KW - computer-supported cooperative work KW - distributed cognition KW - expertise sharing KW - group memory KW - information sharing KW - knowledge management KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory AB -

The term organizational memory is due for an overhaul. Memory appears to be everywhere in organizations; yet, the term has been limited to a few uses. In this paper we examine what memory in an organization really is. Based on an ethnographic study of a telephone hotline group, this paper presents a micro-level analysis of a hotline call, the work activity surrounding the call, and the memory used in the work activity. We do this analysis from the viewpoint of distributed cognition theory, finding it fruitful for an understanding of an organization’s memory.

JF - Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'98) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Just Talk to Me: A Field Study of Expertise Location T2 - Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'98) Y1 - 1998 A1 - McDonald, David W. A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - bug reporting KW - CMC KW - computer mediated communications KW - expert locators KW - expertise finding KW - expertise location KW - expertise networks KW - expertise sharing KW - information seeking KW - knowledge networks KW - knowledge sharing AB -

Everyday, people in organizations must solve their problems to get their work accomplished. To do so, they often must find others with knowledge and information. Systems that assist users with finding such expertise are increasingly interesting to organizations and scientific communities. But, as we begin to design and construct such systems, it is important to determine what we are attempting to augment. Accordingly, we conducted a five-month field study of a medium-sized software firm. We found the participants use complex, iterative behaviors to minimize the number of possible expertise sources, while at the same time, provide a high possibility of garnering the necessary expertise. We briefly consider the design implications of the identification, selection, and escalation behaviors found during our field study.

JF - Proceedings of the 1998 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'98) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - The Do-I-Care Agent: Effective Social Discovery and Filtering on the Web T2 - Computer-Assisted Information Searching on Internet (RIAO'97) Y1 - 1997 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Starr, Brian A1 - Pazzani, Michael KW - agents KW - collaboration KW - expertise finding KW - expertise sharing KW - machine learning KW - social filtering KW - World Wide Web AB -

The Web is a vast, dynamic source of information and resources. Because of its size and diversity, it is increasingly likely that if the information one seeks is not already there, it will be soon. Unfortunately, finding the right places to look, and persistently revisiting those places until the information is available is an onerous task. In this paper, we describe Do-I-Care (DICA), an agent that uses both technical and social mechanisms to ease the burden of locating "interesting" new information and resources on the Web.

DICA monitors Web pages previously found by the agent's user to be relevant for any changes. It then compares these changes against a user model, classifies them as potentially interesting or not, and reports the interesting changes to the user. The user model is derived by accepting relevance feedback on changes previously found. Because the agent focuses on changes to known pages rather than discovering new pages, we increase the likelihood that the information found will be interesting.

DICA combines an effortless collaboration mechanism with the natural incentives for individual users to maintain and train their own agents. Simply by pointing DICA agents at other agents, changes and opinions can be propagated from agent to agent automatically. Thus, individuals train and use DICA for themselves, but by using a simple technical mechanism, other users can use those results without the additional effort that often accompanies collaboration.

JF - Computer-Assisted Information Searching on Internet (RIAO'97) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Hanging on the 'Wire: A Field Study of an Audio-only Media Space JF - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Y1 - 1997 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Starr, Brian A1 - Hindus, Debby A1 - Scott D. Mainwaring KW - audio KW - audio spaces KW - CMC KW - computer-mediated communication KW - electronic social spaces KW - media spaces KW - mediated communication KW - norms KW - privacy KW - rich interactions KW - social interactions KW - social presence KW - speech interactions KW - telepresence AB -

The primary focus of this article is an analysis of an audio-only media space from a computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) perspective. To explore whether audio by itself is suitable for shared media systems, we studied a workgroup using an audio-only media space. This media space, called Thunderwire, combined high-quality audio with open connec-tions to create a shared space for its users. The two-month field study provided a richly nuanced understanding of this audio spaces social use. The system afforded rich sociable interactions. As well, users were able to create a useful, usable social space; however, through an analysis of the social norms that the participants formulated, we show that they had to take into account being in an audio-only environment. Within the field study, then, audio by itself was sufficient for a usable media space and a useful social space, but users were forced to adapt to many audio-only and system conditions. The article also considers audios implications for privacy.

VL - 4 UR - Complete IS - 1 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Answer Garden 2: Merging Organizational Memory with Collaborative Help T2 - Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'96) Y1 - 1996 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - McDonald, David W. KW - CMC KW - collaborative help KW - community memory KW - computer-mediated communications KW - corporate memory KW - expertise sharing KW - group memory KW - help KW - information access KW - information refining KW - information retrieval KW - information systems KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory AB -

This research examines a collaborative solution to a common problem, that of providing help to distributed users. The Answer Garden 2 system provides a secondgeneration architecture for organizational and community memory applications. After describing the need for Answer Garden 2’s functionality, we describe the architecture of the system and two underlying systems, the Cafe ConstructionKit and Collaborative Refinery. We also present detailed descriptions of the collaborative help and collaborative refining facilities in the Answer Garden 2 system

JF - Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'96) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Definitional and contextual issues in organizational and group memories JF - Information Technology & People Y1 - 1996 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S KW - collaborative memory KW - collective memory KW - organizational issues KW - organizational memory KW - social issues AB -

Describes how organizations looking to augment their memories through information technologies can employ an organizational memory system. Organizational and group memories can include a wide variety of materials, including documents, rationales for decisions, formal descriptions of procedures, and so on. Discusses findings from case studies of six organizations using or attempting to use the Answer Garden, a type of organizational memory system. Examines two major issues in the implementation of such systems: the gap between the idealized definition of organizational memory and the constrained realities of organizational life; and the effects of reducing contextual information in computer‐based memory. Suggests some avenues for managing these issues as well as for further technical and organizational research.

VL - 9 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Definitional and contextual issues in organizational and group memories JF - Information Technology & People Y1 - 1996 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - Answer Garden KW - context KW - organizational memory KW - organizations AB -

Organizations are looking to augment their memories through information technologies. Organizational and group memories can include a wide variety of materials, including documents, rationales for decisions, formal descriptions of procedures, and so on. This paper discusses findings from case studies of six organizations using or attempting to use the Answer Garden, a type of organizational memory system. Two major issues in the implementation of such systems are examined: (1) the gap between the idealized definition of organizational memory and the constrained realities of organizational life, and (2) the effects of reducing contextual information in computer-based memory

VL - 9 UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Do I Care?—Tell me what’s changed on the Web T2 - Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Machine Learning in Information Access Y1 - 1996 A1 - Starr, Brian A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Pazzani, Michael KW - agents KW - expertise finding KW - expertise sharing KW - social search KW - World Wide Web AB -

We describe the Do-I-Care agent, which uses machine learning to detect "interesting" changes to Web pages previously found to be relevant. Because this agent focuses on changes to known pages rather than discovering new pages, we increase the likelihood that the information found will be interesting. The agent’s accuracy in finding interesting changes and in learning is improved by exploiting regularities in how pages are changed. Additionally, these agents can be used collaboratively by cascading them and by propagating interesting findings to other users’ agents.

JF - Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Machine Learning in Information Access UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Do-I-Care: A Collaborative Web Agent T2 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI"96) Y1 - 1996 A1 - Starr, Brian A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Pazzani, Michael KW - agents KW - collaboration KW - expertise finding KW - expertise sharing KW - machine learning KW - social filtering KW - social search KW - World Wide Web AB -

Social filtering and collaborative resource discovery mechanisms often fail because of the extra burden, even tiny, placed on the user. This work proposes an innovative World Wide Web agent that uses a model of collaboration that leverages the natural incentives for individual users to easily provide for collaborative work.

JF - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI"96) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Social activity indicators for groupware JF - Computer Y1 - 1996 A1 - Ackerman, Mark S A1 - Starr, Brian KW - chat system KW - distributed groupware KW - expertise sharing systems KW - geographically dispersed people KW - social activity indicator KW - social computing KW - social computing systems KW - social information KW - social psychology theory KW - social visualizations KW - team mates KW - UI systems KW - user interfaces KW - user-interface functionality KW - work groups AB -

Suppose you're a member of a few development teams, working with people who are geographically dispersed. You're using distributed groupware to work with your team mates. How do you decide when to work on a project and when to ignore requests to work on a project, when there are enough users on the groupware system to bother using it, who is available to answer a question, and which applications should get the most real estate on your screen? To help answer these questions, distributed groupware systems must indicate something about the social world they represent-who is on the system and what they are doing. User interfaces for groupware (or computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) applications) must therefore convey social information. It's energizing to know, for example, that your team mates are busy working away on a project. And it's nice to know when your friends or colleagues are available on a chat system. You might not need to know the semantics of the messages or documents involved, just that some activity is occurring. This is true for systems used by work groups as well as those used by an organization or a community of users. We think such social indicators should be a standard part of the CSCW user interface. On the basis of social psychology theory, we believe that a class of social indicator, which we call social activity indicators, is a simple, powerful way to improve user-interface functionality. Furthermore, social activity indicators are easy to build.

VL - 29 UR - Complete-OnlyDOI ER - TY - CONF T1 - Thunderwire: A Field Study of an Audio-only Media Space T2 - Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'96) Y1 - 1996 A1 - Hindus, Debby A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Scott D. Mainwaring A1 - Starr, Brian KW - audio KW - audio spaces KW - CMC KW - computer-mediated communication KW - electronic social spaces KW - media spaces KW - mediated communication KW - norms KW - rich interactions KW - social interactions KW - social presence KW - speech interactions KW - telepresence AB -

To explore the potential of using audio by itself in a shared media system, we studied a workgroup using an audio-only media space. This media space, called Thunderwire, combined high-quality audio with open connections to create a shared space for its users. The two-month field study provided a richly nuanced understanding of this audio space's social use. The system afforded rich sociable interactions. Indeed, within the field study, audio by itself afforded a telepresent environment for its users. However while a usable media space and a useful social space, Thunderwire required its users to adapt to many audio-only conditions.

JF - Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'96) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - The Zephyr Help Instance: Promoting Ongoing Activity in a CSCW System T2 - Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI"96) Y1 - 1996 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Palen, Leysia KW - CMC KW - collaborative help KW - collective help KW - computer-mediated communications KW - e-communities KW - electronic social spaces KW - expertise sharing KW - help KW - knowledge sharing KW - media spaces KW - norms KW - organizational interfaces KW - social maintenance AB -

If Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems are to be successful over time, it will be necessary to promote ongoing and continuing activity, not just initial adoption. In this paper, we consider what technical and social affordances are required to encourage the continued use of a CSCW system. To explore these issues, we examine a chat-like system, the Zephyr Help Instance, which is used extensively at MIT. The Help Instance facilitates users asking questions of one another, and is an example of a distributed help and problem-solving system. We provide an overview of the system’s use as well as those mechanisms, both technical and social, that facilitate continuing its use over time.

JF - Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI"96) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Collection Maintenance in the Digital Library} booktitle={Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (Digital Libraries' 95) Y1 - 1995 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Fielding, Roy T KW - collection KW - digital library KW - maintenance KW - organizational memory KW - usability KW - World Wide Web AB -

Maintenance will be critical to digital libraries, especially those that promote broad access to diverse, informal materials. If ignored, maintenance issues within the digital library -- especially those relating to its materials -- will threaten its usefulness and even its long-term viability. We perceive the maintenance problem to be both technical and institutional, and this paper considers the maintenance of the digital library as both institution and technology. The paper examines collection maintenance from several vantage points, including software architecture and the type of collection, arguing that digital libraries that contain informal and dynamic material will have substantially greater maintenance problems. The paper ends with an examination of potential technical solutions.

UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Memory in the small: An application to provide task-based organizational memory for a scientific community T2 - Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'95) Y1 - 1995 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Mandel, Eric KW - collaborative memory KW - collective memory KW - group memory KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory KW - scientific communities AB -

Many forms of organizational memory must exist embedded within the organizational processes and tasks. This paper argues that "memory-in-the small," memory utilized in the performance of an organizational task, can serve as an effective performance support mechanism. By basing organizational memory upon organizational tasks (and basing task support upon organizational memory), organizational memory systems can provide additional and necessary support services for organizations and communities. As an example of memory-in-the-small, this paper describes a software application, called the ASSIST, that combines organizational memory with task performance for a scientific community. The ASSIST utilizes and stores the collective memory of astrophysicists about data analysis, and is used world-wide by astrophysicists. The paper also considers the theoretical and architectural issues involved when combining organizational memory with task performance.

JF - Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'95) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Social Activity Indicators: Interface Components for CSCW Systems T2 - Proceedings of the 8th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface and Software Technology (UIST'95) Y1 - 1995 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Starr, Brian KW - awareness KW - human-computer interfaces KW - information systems KW - social activity KW - social UX KW - user interfaces KW - visualization AB -

Knowing what social activity is occurring within and through a Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) system is often very useful. This is especially true for computer-mediated communication systems such as chat and other synchronous applications. People will attend to these systems more closely when they know that there is interesting activity on them. Interface mechanisms for indicating social activity, however, are often ad-hoc, if present at all. This paper argues for the importance of displaying social activity as well as proposes a generalized mechanism for doing so. This social activity indication mechanism is built upon a new CSCW toolkit, the Cafe ConstructionKit, and the Cafe ConstructionKit provides a number of important facilities for making construction of these indicators easy and straight-forward. Accordingly, this paper presents both the Cafe ConstructionKit as a CSCW toolkit as well as a mechanism for creating activity indicators.

JF - Proceedings of the 8th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface and Software Technology (UIST'95) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Augmenting the Organizational Memory: A Field Study of Answer Garden T2 - Proceedings of the 1994 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'94) Y1 - 1994 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - collaborative help KW - collective help KW - corporate memory KW - expertise sharing KW - group memory KW - information access KW - information retrieval KW - information systems KW - knowledge sharing KW - organizational memory AB -

A growing concern for organizations and groups has been to augment their knowledge and expertise. One such augmentation is to provide an organizational memory, some record of the organization's knowledge. However, relatively little is known about how computer systems might enhance organizational, group, or community memory. This paper presents findings from a field study of one such organizational memory system, the Answer Garden. The paper discusses the usage data and qualitative evaluations from the field study, and then draws a set of lessons for next-generation organizational memory systems.

JF - Proceedings of the 1994 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'94) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Definitional and contextual issues in organizational and group memories T2 - Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'94) Y1 - 1994 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - Answer Garden KW - context KW - organizational memory KW - organizations AB -

Organizations are looking to augment their memories through information technologies. Organizational and group memories can include a wide variety of materials, including documents, rationales for decisions, formal descriptions of procedures, and so on. This paper discusses findings from case studies of six organizations using or attempting to use the Answer Garden, a type of organizational memory system. Two major issues in the implementation of such systems are examined: (1) the gap between the idealized definition of organizational memory and the constrained realities of organizational life, and (2) the effects of reducing contextual information in computer-based memory.

JF - Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'94) UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Metaphors along the information highway T2 - Proceedings of the Symposium on Directions and Impacts of Advanced Computing (DIAC’94) Y1 - 1994 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - information infrastructure KW - metaphors AB -

It is absolutely essentially that the metaphors of use surrounding the NII and its component services be examined critically. We need to do this for two reasons. The descriptions and explanations of the NII and its component services will affect the societal debate around implementation and social impacts. Some of the metaphors used to describe the NII, however, distort the real effects and possibilities inherent in the NII. The NII's use is likely to have dramatic effects on our notions of democracy, eduction, community, equality and other important features of our society. Nonetheless, the terms of acceptance and adoption for the NII are not yet set societally. It is important to do this critical examination now, before the metaphors and terms get permanently established.

JF - Proceedings of the Symposium on Directions and Impacts of Advanced Computing (DIAC’94) UR - Complete ER - TY - Generic T1 - Providing Social Interaction in the Digital Library T2 - Digital Libraries ’94 Y1 - 1994 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman KW - Cafe ConstructionKit system KW - digital libraries KW - social interaction AB -

As we build the digital library, we need to be careful not to carelessly obliterate some of the important features of current libraries. Many proposals for digital libraries remove social exchange and interaction, focusing narrowly on the technical mechanisms of information access. This is not only unwise, it is unnecessary since we could provide mechanisms for social exchange and interaction within our systems. Simply put, we do not need to remove the social world from our systems. This paper discusses why such interaction is important, and then presents a toolkit, called the Cafe ConstructionKit, that can provide computer-mediated communication support at low cost.

JF - Digital Libraries ’94 CY - College Station, TX UR - Complete ER - TY - CONF T1 - Answer Garden: A Tool for Growing Organizational Memory T2 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Office Information Systems (COCS'90) Y1 - 1990 A1 - Mark S. Ackerman A1 - Malone, Thomas W. KW - Answer Garden KW - organizational memory KW - Q&A AB -

Answer Garden allows organizations to develop databases of commonly asked questions that grow "organically" as new questions arise and are answered. It is designed to help in situations (such as field service organizations and customer "hot lines") where there is a continuing stream of questions, many of which occur over and over, but some of which the organization has never seen before. The system includes a branching network of diagnostic questions that helps users find the answers they want. If the answer is not present, the system automatically sends the question to the appropriate expert, and the answer is returned to the user as well as inserted into the branching network. Experts can also modify this network in response to users' problems. Our initial Answer Garden database contains questions and answers about how to use the X Window System.

JF - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Office Information Systems (COCS'90) UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Augmenting a window system with speech input JF - IEEE Computer Y1 - 1990 A1 - Schmandt, Chris A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. A1 - Hindus, Debby KW - interface control language KW - speech input KW - speech interface KW - user interface KW - windows interface KW - X Window System AB -

Despite high expectations, there have been few convincing demonstrations of speech input in desktop computing environments. We have focused on window systems, where speech might provide an auxiliary channel to support window navigation.

Xspeak, our speech interface to the X Window System, associates words with each window. Speaking a window's name moves it to the front of the screen and moves the cursor into it. Speech does not provide a keyboard substitute, but it does assume some of the functions currently assigned to the mouse. Thus, a user can manage a number of windows without removing his or her hands from the keyboard.

We provided this interface to a group of student programmers who used it for several months. This pilot study was designed to identify some initial considerations for using speech recognition in workstations

VL - 23 UR - Complete ER - TY - JOUR T1 - A construction set for multimedia applications JF - IEEE Software Y1 - 1989 A1 - Hodges, Matthew E A1 - Sasnett, Russell M A1 - Ackerman, Mark S. KW - authoring system KW - hypermedia KW - multimedia AB -

The authors describe an interface system called Athena Muse. Muse is an experiment kit for the construction of multimedia learning environments. Learning environments developed with Muse offer a diverse set of complementary interaction techniques, styles, and devices. An interface developer can choose from four representation approaches: directed graphs, multidimensional spatial frameworks, declarative constraints, and procedural languages.

VL - 6 UR - Complete IS - 1 ER -