Mark A. Jones

Insight lab: an immersive team environment linking paper, displays, and data

The Insight Lab is an immersive environment designed to support teams who create design requirements documents. Requirements emerge from a deep understanding of a problem domain, which is achieved through in-depth analysis of large amounts of qualitative data. The goal of the Lab is to facilitate the data analysis process through the seamless interaction of computer-based technologies with objects in the environment. Team members can use paper and whiteboards to sketch, annotate, and display their analysis work. Barcodes are used to link papers and whiteboard printouts to the multimedia data stored in the computer.

Human computer (sexual) interactions

There are few better examples of the pervasion of computing technology into private life than the proliferation of human-computer sexual interactions. Although the HCI community has become increasingly interested in leisure contexts, entertainment, emotion, affect, enjoyment and fun, it tends to ignore the fact that one of the ways many people have fun with their computers is by accessing pornography. Indeed pornography may well be the only reason that some people own home computers at all [8]. “Sex” and “porn” have been the most frequent Internet search terms since the Web became widely available, and terms relating to the topic are so prevalent that they have to be filtered from indices of current popular searches. All of the key issues of usability, accessibility, and (increasingly) enjoyability, which concern HCI, apply equally to pornographic applications. Yet searches of the ACM’s digital library yield no articles discussing, for example, the effective design of pornographic Web sites or the lessons that might be learned from successful pornographic applications. What work there is, very properly, addresses the prevention of crime, but there is almost no work on mainstream adult entertainment. New communication technologies have been used in the production and consumption of pornography with such regularity that the appropriation might be formulated as a general rule. Technologies such as pho-

CSCW '96 workshop: widening the net: the theory and practice of physical and network communities: Nov.16–17, 1996, Cambridge, MA

This introduction is a summary of the workshop from the perspective of one of the workshop participants. It is followed by a report written by the workshop organizers, giving their perspective, and then the position papers.

Successful corporate communities: all communities are not the same

These are some of the questions that arose as my team began 9 months of research assessing Andersen Consultings knowledge sharing initiatives. The team visited practitioners at client sites and offices around the globe to understand how the firm is currently sharing knowledge. A key aspect of the research was understanding how personnel used ACs Knowledge Xchange TM, a world-wide Lotus Notes system currently being used by more than 28,000 people. There are hundreds of knowledge databases created informally on a local level as well as formally on a global level, with most of them organized around communities. We knew before we began our research that some knowledge bases were more heavily used than others, but there was little understanding of why.

Establishing a common knowledge management framework

[ 1 ] Security Joint Working Group, Proposed Draft of a MIG Handbook UN/EDIFACT Message KEYMAN, 30 June 1995. [2] Security Joint Working Group: Committee Draft UN/EDIFACT CD 9735-5, Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT) Application Level Syntax Rules, Part 5: Security Rules for Bach EDI (Authenticity: Integrity and NonRepudiation of Origin, Release 1, 14. December 1995. [3] United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Economic Commission for Europe, Committee on the Development of Trade: TRADE/WP.4/R.1026/Add.2, EDIFACT Security Implementation Guidelines, 22 February 1994. [4] Fritz Bauspie[3, Juan Carlos Cruetlas, Montse Rubia, DEDICA Directory based EDI Certificate Access and Management, Digital Signature Conference, July 1996. [ 5 ] DEDICA Consortium,. CEC Deliverable WP03.DST1: Technical description of X.509 and UN/EDIFACT certificates, July 1996 [ 6 ] DEDICA Consortium, CEC Deliverable WP03.DST2: Naming Conversion Rules Specifications Requirements, July 1996. [ 7 ] DEDICA Consortium,. CEC Deliverable WP03.DST3: Final Specifications of CertMap Conversion Rules, July 1996. [8] EDIRA Memorandum of Understanding for the Operation of EDI Registration Authorities, Final Draft. November, 1993. [9] Bruno Romskaug (De), Guidelines on EDI use of Directory, Working document 1995. [10] PKIX Working Group: Internet Public Key Infrastmcture Part IlL Certificate Management Protocols, Internet Draft, June 1996. [11 ] Claus Norgaard Rasmusse, EDIFACT Security using v3-syntax, Certificates and public keys, r 3 security engineering, 1997. [12] Network Working Group, INTERNET-DRAFT: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): Attribute Syntax Definitions, 1997. [ 13 ] Network Working Group, INTERNET~DRAFT: A Summary of the X.500(96) User Schema for use with LDAPv3, 1997. [14] Tim Howes, M. Smith, RFC 1823: The LDAP Application Program Interface, Network Working Group, University of Michigan, 1995. [15] PKIX Working Group: Internet Public Key Infrastructure Part III: Certificate Management Protocols, Internet Draft, June 1996. [ 16] Network Working Group, INTERNET-DRAFT: Internet Public Key Infrastructure, X.509 Certificate and CRL Profile, 1997. [ 17 ] Network Working Group, INTERNET-DRAFT: Internet Public Key Infrastructure, Certificate Policy and Certification Practices Framework, 1997. [18] Network Working Group, INTERNET-DRAFT: Internet Public Key Infrastructure, Operational Protocols LDAPv2, 1997.

Knowledge management column

Measuring the value of knowledge management I had a thought provoking knowledge management filled day last week. In the morning, I heard Carl-Erik Sveiby talk about his perspective on knowledge management at a breakfast talk sponsored by Celemi, a knowledge management consulting company. Sveiby recently published a book titled The New Organizational Wealth, an elaboration on his theories about managing and measuring knowledge-based assets. That same evening I visited 3-M as a part of a conference sponsored by the Design Management Institute, where we heard a talk by a senior researcher and executive about how 3-M supports and fosters innovation by its employees. And on the plane between the two events, I picked up a copy of Mays Chief Executive magazine which had an interview with George Shaheen, the Managing Partner of Andersen Consulting. Andersen Consulting (where I work, by the way) has invested significant amounts in KM in recent years, and much of the interview focused on issues surrounding KM.

Reflections on the judging process

Traditional design competitions reward striking interfaces, beautiful objects, and compelling ideas; things that are visually well designed or unusual stand out, because they surprise the judges and extend the boundaries of design. These are qualities that are used for comparing entries side by side. Judges can point to features and discuss elements that are noteworthy. Interactions, on the other hand, are experienced over time, which challenges judges to come up with effective ways to compare products that are used for different purposes or situations or in dramatically different ways. How for example should a computer operated coffee pot be compared to a medical device, interactive TV product, planning tools for teachers or a handheld device for brokers on a trading floor? How to handle the marked differences between the entries, in fact, was one of the key points of discussion among the judges. To get beyond superficial first impressions, the group members individually spent the entire morning examining the submissions to understand their purpose, intended uses, and how they are experienced by users. Ideally, the judges could actually use a working product, but several were not available because they were designed for specialized users and situations (such as the floor of the New York Stock Exchange or a group of teachers in Florida). For these, the judges had to rely on other media to fully understand an Beth Lange & Mark Jones