ABSTRACT
Finding the right person to ask for help is a difficult task within a large enterprise. While there are a few studies detailing practices for finding an expert often in the context of an expertise locator system, there are fewer studies on workplace practices and challenges for finding a person who can help, especially independent of any particular technology. We conducted a two-part study of helper-finding activities with 36 enterprise workers, representing different job roles and levels of experience. First, we present a taxonomy of workplace helper-finding needs that involves tasks, topics, and helper selection criteria, developed by analyzing two weeks of participant diaries describing helper-finding problems. Second, we present the results of follow-up interviews with each participant, focusing on helper-finding challenges in the workplace. Finally, we present design implications for systems aimed at supporting helper-finding in the workplace.
- Ackerman, M. S. and Halverson, C. Sharing Expertise: The Next Step for Knowledge Management. In Social Capital and Information Technology. 2004, 273--299.Google Scholar
- Ackerman, M. S. and Mcdonald, D. W. Answer Garden 2: Merging Organizational Memory with Collaborative Help. Proc. of CSCW, (1996), 97--105. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Alavi, M. and Leidner, D. E. Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues. MIS Quarterly 25, 1 (2001). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Allen, T. J. Managing the Flow of Technology. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1977.Google Scholar
- Argote, L. and Ingram, P. Knowledge Transfer: A Basis for Competitive Advantage in Firms. Org. Behavior and Human Decision Processes 82, 1 (2000), 150--169.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Constant, D., Sproull, L., and Kiesler, S. The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice. Organizational Science 7, 2 (1996), 119--135.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cross, R. and Sproull, L. More Than an Answer: Information Relationships for Actionable Knowledge. Organization Science 15, 4 (2004), 446--462. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dunbar, R. I. M. Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution 22, 6 (1992), 469--493.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ehrlich, K., Lin, C., and Griffiths-fisher, V. Searching for Experts in the Enterprise: Combining Text and Social Network Analysis. Proc. GROUP, (2007), 117--126. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ehrlich, K. and Shami, N. S. Searching for expertise. Proc. of CHI, ACM Press (2008), 1093--1096. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Erickson, T., Danis, C. M., Kellogg, W. A., and Helander, M. E. Assistance: The Work Practices of Human Administrative Assistants and their Implications for IT and Organizations. Proc. of CHI, (2008), 609--618. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Faraj, S. and Sproull, L. Coordinating Expertise in Software Development Teams. Management Science 46, 12 (2000), 1554--1568. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Granovetter, M. S. The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology 7, 6 (1973), 1360--1380.Google Scholar
- Guy, I., Perer, A., Daniel, T., et al. Guess Who? Enriching the Social Graph through a Crowdsourcing Game. Proc. of CHI, (2011), 1373--1382. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hahn, J. and Subramani, M. R. A Framework of Knowledge Management Systems. Proc. of ICIS, (2000), 302--312. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lin, C.-Y., Ehrlich, K., Griffiths-Fisher, V., and Des-forges, C. SmallBlue: People Mining for Expertise Search. IEEE Multimedia 15, 1 (2008), pp. 78--84. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Malhotra, Y. Why Knowledge Management Systems Fail? In Knowledge Management Lessons Learned: What Works and What Doesn't. 2004, 87--112.Google Scholar
- Mamykina, L., Manoim, B., Mittal, M., Hripcsak, G., and Hartmann, B. Design Lessons from the Fastest Q & A Site in the West. Proc. of CHI, (2011), 2857--2866. Google ScholarDigital Library
- McDonald, D. W. and Ackerman, M. S. Just Talk to Me: A Field Study of Expertise Location. Proc. of CSCW, (1998), 315--324. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Reichling, T. and Veith, M. Expertise Sharing in a Heterogeneous Organizational Environment. Proc. of ECSCW, (2005), 325--345. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Reichling, T. and Wulf, V. Expert Recommender Systems in Practice: Evaluating Semi-automatic Profile Generation. Proc. of CHI, (2009), 59--68. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Seidman, I. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education And the Social Sciences. Teachers College Press, New York, 1998.Google Scholar
- Terveen, L. and Mcdonald, D. W. Social Matching: A Framework and Research Agenda. ToCHI 12, 3 (2005), 401--434. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Thom, J., Helsley, S. Y., Matthews, T. L., Daly, E. M., and Millen, D. R. What Are You Working On? Status Message Q & A in an Enterprise SNS. Proc. of ECSCW, (2011).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Vivacqua, A. S. Agents for Expertise Location Assisting the Help-Seeking Process. AAAI Technical Report SS-99-03, (1999).Google Scholar
- White, R. W., Richardson, M., and Liu, Y. Effects of community size and contact rate in synchronous social q&a. Proc. of CHI, ACM Press (2011), 2837. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wijk, R. V., Jansen, J. J. P., and Lyles, M. A. Inter- and Intra-Organizational Knowledge Transfer: A Meta-Analytic Review and Assessment of its Antecedents and Consequences. Journal of Management Studies 45, 4 (2008), 830--853.Google Scholar
- Yarosh, S., Matthews, T., and Zhou, M. Asking the Right Person: Supporting Expertise Selection in the Enterprise. Proc. of CHI, (2012), 2247--2256. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- I need someone to help!: a taxonomy of helper-finding activities in the enterprise
Recommendations
Asking the right person: supporting expertise selection in the enterprise
CHI '12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsExpertise selection is the process of choosing an expert from a list of recommended people. This is an important and nuanced step in expertise location that has not received a great deal of attention. Through a lab-based, controlled investigation with ...
Understanding Personal Productivity: How Knowledge Workers Define, Evaluate, and Reflect on Their Productivity
CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsProductivity tracking tools often determine productivity based on the time interacting with work-related applications. To deconstruct productivity's diverse and nebulous nature, we investigate how knowledge workers conceptualize personal productivity ...
Personal informatics for everyday life
The spreading of devices and applications allowing people to collect personal information opens new opportunities for Personal Informatics. Although many of these tools are already effectively used by motivated people to gain self-knowledge and produce ...
Comments