Jean-Pierre Cahier

Beyond Web 2.0 … and Beyond the Semantic Web

Tim O’Reilly, the famous technology book publisher, changed the life of many of us when he coined the name “Web 2.0” (O’ Reilly 2005). Our research topics suddenly became subjects for open discussion in various cultural formats such as radio and TV, while at the same time they became part of an inappropriate marketing discourse according to several scientific reviewers. Indeed Tim O’Reilly’s initial thoughts were about economic consequence, since it was about the resurrection of the Web after the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Some opponents of the concept do not think the term should be used at all since it is underpinned by no technological revolution. In contrast, we think that there was a paradigm shift when several sites based on user-generated content became some of the most visited Web sites and massive adoption of that kind is worthy of researchers’ attention.

From action icon to knowledge icon: Objective-oriented icon taxonomy in computer science

Abstract Icon plays a critical role in computer interface design. Studies on icon taxonomy explain the way in which various types of icon represent the objects and provide designers creation rules by which icons are more in line with users’ cognitive psychology. However, along with larger and larger use of icons, the previous classification criterion causes the boundary between categories blur. What’s more, Single classification standard is not able to well illustrate the icons applied in today’s computer applications. The purpose of this paper is to present an objective-oriented icon taxonomy which proposes to categorize icons into action icon and knowledge icon. To assess this proposition, we analyzed a sample of icons that applied in computer interface and suggest precise application domains to both action icon and knowledge icon categories. The results of this practice manifested that action icon and knowledge icon implied a high relation with applied environment and explicated the development trace of computer icons. This work is one of the first to point out the notion of knowledge icon and to highlight the importance of objective of icon application. Findings in this paper could enrich icon use in computer interface design, especially provides possible way to improve online knowledge sharing by visual tool like icon.

Visual Distinctive Language: Using a Hypertopic-Based Iconic Tagging System for Knowledge Sharing

Tagging systems for social semantic web centralize and provide the tags that can be employed in classifying, sharing and seeking knowledge on the web for personal or organizational use. However, an increased variety of vocabularies and languages cause connections between tags and documents marked by these textual tags to become less and less distinctive, making the use and reuse of tagging systems even harder. In this paper, we present an approach of Visual Distinctive Language to improve the representation of tags and their structure. This approach was also evaluated by a control experiment with an observation of tagging process, the results of which have validated our hypothesis.

Serious games for expertise training: Rules in questions

We propose the Architecture for Representations, Games, Interactions, and Learning among Experts (ARGILE) for participatory and knowledge - intensive serious games. Faced with the problem of training in the areas of advanced expertise and practices, reference knowledge is neither stabilized nor unanimous, but rather dynamic and continuously evolving. Moreover, the expert does not make decisions based on pre-established recipes, but it is brought to trial and error, to discuss with peers and to discover solutions in complex situations that are proposed. Thats why the rules and the game objects must be easily annotated, discussed and modified by trainers and players themselves. We present in this paper a methodology, tools and technical architecture to design, use and evaluate such serious games. ARGILE allows ensuring the participatory design of the games rule and involving debate among designers. We illustrate concretely the ideas presented on two examples related to ongoing projects which uses this architecture for the transmission of complex ideas in sustainability (Defismed project), and for training in action in a crisis situation (Aidcrisis project).

Expérimentation d'une approche coopérative et multipoint de vue de la construction et de l'exploitation de catalogues commerciaux « actifs »

Les approches du web Semantique apparaissent prometteuses pour mieux maitriser l’organisation de grands ensembles de documents numeriques commerciaux. Nous proposons pour cela la notion de catalogue commercial « actif », construit et exploite a partir d’une multiplicite de points de vue. Notre hypothese est que pour ce type de collection de documents electroniques, l’utilisation de structures en reseaux semantiques, en s’appuyant sur des approches d’ingenierie des connaissances, donne de meilleurs resultats par rapport aux systemes a classifications monopoint de vue.

Modelling the communication between emergency actors in crisis management

Successful crisis management depends on collaboration between different stakeholders and involved organizations, it also relies on making a good decision in a short time. Therefore, it requires that actors communicate and share information on the field to achieve awareness about the event. Due to an ineffective communication in emergency response, awareness and collaboration are impacted, for that we aim to study the activity and the communication in inter-organizational crisis management and extract the various problems that actors encounter in information sharing which prevent them from achieving their goals. We present in this paper our initial result in which we model the dependencies between different actions, information and actors.

Co-designing a serious game to train Emergency Medical Services

Numerous studies have explored the process of learning and its effectiveness in training and education. Training in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) field requires a combination of approaches and techniques to acquire medical skills with unanticipated events and to develop the capability to cooperate and coordinate individual emergency activities towards a collective effort. Crisis management is a special type of collaborative situations that why we propose a participative and knowledge-intensive serious game, as a collaborative e-learning tool for training (EMS). We believe that emergencies doctors learn best through real life experiences and serious games have the ability to simulate situations that are impossible to generate in a real-life exercise due to high cost, safety and complex environment related to situations. However, our approach takes into account the presence of different actors in crisis situation, like police and firefighters, and the high volume of (medical as well as non-medical) expert knowledge.

Iconic categorization with knowledge-based “icon systems” can improve collaborative KM

Icon system could represent an efficient solution for collective iconic categorization of knowledge by providing graphical interpretation. Their pictorial characters assist visualizing the structure of text to become more understandable beyond vocabulary obstacle. In this paper we are proposing a Knowledge Engineering (KM) based iconic representation approach. We assume that these systematic icons improve collective knowledge management. Meanwhile, text (constructed under our knowledge management model - Hypertopic) helps to reduce the diversity of graphical understanding belonging to different users. This “position paper” also prepares to demonstrate our hypothesis by an “iconic social tagging” experiment which is to be accomplished in 2011 with UTT students. We describe the “socio semantic web” information portal involved in this project, and a part of the icons already designed for this experiment in Sustainability field. We have reviewed existing theoretical works on icons from various origins, which can be used to lay the foundation of robust “icons systems”.

Fostering rural actors' empowerment through “multi-viewpoints” methods and ICT tools

As a part of a project exploring ways to define transition to Territorial AgroEcological System (tTAES), researchers and rural stakeholders (policymakers and farmers) organized territorial participatory design (TPD) workshops. Such TPD workshops are especially challenging since actors projecting their activity into the future confront many viewpoints or controversial dimensions (farming systems, natural resources, food-chain…). Multiple viewpoints in TPDs foster participation and empowerment of rural actors, especially weak actors whose language and semantic get away from prevailing or expert perspectives. In this “work in progress” paper, we propose a multi-viewpoints model for both organization and knowledge purposes in tTAES workshops. It allows for adequate organization of activities and agendas and also supports knowledge sharing, capitalizing, annotating and category-building with respect to the plurality of semantics of the actors. First we experienced the method with rural actors in face-to-face meetings using classical maps and paper devices. Then we propose guidelines for viewpoints-based software tools for audiorecording/tagging of TPD meetings material, annotation, knowledge sharing on the Web and cross-viewpoints visualization all along the TPD process.

How to Pick up the Needed Information about What Is Going Around Us: Information Awareness in Crisis Management

Emergency responders require maintaining awareness of the relevant information, in order to collaborate and achieve their activities successfully. However, the multitude organizations involved in crisis response are faced with many challenges and boundaries such as culture, terminology, objectives and priorities. All of this hampers the coordination and communication of the different information requirements for each particular need within inter-organizational collaboration. As result, this leads to issues in awareness, decision making and carrying out activities in addition to the loss of time. Hence, awareness is an important factor for crisis response success. This prompted us to ask the original question: How to pick up the needed and the relevant information about what is going around us to integrate and achieve our activity? In this paper, we present: (1) the results of this study on awareness issues, causes and effects in Inter- Organizational Collaboration in Crisis Management (2) We describe a semi structured system approach supporting Information Awareness, this approach help the different actors to pick up the needed and the relevant information about what is going around them to coordinate, integrate and achieve their activities.