Mark Ginsburg

Exploring the black box of task-technology fit

Task-technology fit has been developed as a diagnostic tool to determine whether information systems meet user needs, and has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on the effectiveness of various types of information systems, such as group support systems and management support systems. Despite empirical evidence for the relevance of task-technology fit to improve information system effectiveness, the theory of task-technology fit provides little guidance of how to determine and operationalize fit for particular combinations of task and technology. Consequently, the theoretical validity of the concept of task-technology fit remains limited as does its practical applicability. In this paper, we present the results of an inductive study to explore the concept and antecedents of fit for mobile information systems to support mobile professionals. We performed a content analysis of online user reviews of four mobile technology products with the objective to identify issues that are relevant to users. The mobile technology products include a cell-phone, two personal digital assistants (PDAs), and an ultra-light laptop. The identified issues can be grouped into four conceptual constructs: overall user evaluation, task-related fit, context-related fit, and technology performance, and are characterized by a lower level of abstraction than the level of abstraction deployed in previous research studies on task-technology fit. In order to improve our understanding about how to achieve fit for particular combinations of task, use context, and technology we performed several statistical analyses. (1) An exploratory factor analysis yielded five factors, each indeed including a different set of conceptual constructs; (2) a case-wise analysis indicated user-perceived strengths and limits of individual devices with respect to the five factors; and (3) the results of a multiple regression analysis provided insights about the extent to which the five factors were related with overall technology evaluation. The results presented in the current paper will serve as input for a larger survey.

The US Wine Industry and the Internet: An Analysis of Success factors for Online Business models

This paper explores the use of e-commerce in the distribution channel of the wine industry with an emphasis on the North American market. After achieving early attention from e-commerce pioneers, a number of initiatives to sell wine online have failed dramatically - their business models were not commercially viable - and significant investments have been lost in the process. In this paper, we comment on some of these initiatives and propose a set of general principles to guide online business entry and evolution. The exposition and discussion of our principles provides general lessons regarding the success potentials of the various business models across domains.

A lightweight framework for cross-application user monitoring

The human-computer interaction community has often focused on the face applications present to the user. The authors present a new framework that monitors higher-level events to learn how people access, create, and modify information rather than how they use applications. By associating information sources with tasks and processes and monitoring user actions, the system can offer task-specific help.

Social capital and volunteerism in virtual communities: the case of the Internet Chess Club

Considers the theory of social capital and volunteerism in an online gaming community, the Internet Chess Club (ICC). We discuss how increased social capital provides broad classes of benefits to the participants of the network and suggest how volunteerism can be expected to increase the social capital of a network. We present survey data collected from 62 members of ICC to examine how different types of online volunteers are recruited and work in a successful virtual community. We show that ICC volunteers encourage and enable intense interaction for the benefit of all the membership subgroups. That is, volunteers create social capital and serve as a key asset of the ICC business model; they strengthen both the ICC core business tenets and improve the software features it can offer to members, thereby providing the key to one virtual communitys business success.

Evaluating mass knowledge acquisition using the ALICE chatterbot: the AZ-ALICE dialog system

In this paper, we evaluate mass knowledge acquisition using modified ALICE chatterbots. In particular we investigate the potential of allowing subjects to modify chatterbot responses to see if distributed learning from a web environment can succeed. This experiment looks at dividing knowledge into general conversation and domain specific categories for which we have selected telecommunications. It was found that subject participation in knowledge acquisition can contribute a significant improvement to both the conversational and telecommunications knowledge bases. We further found that participants were more satisfied with domain-specific responses rather than general conversation.

Pediatric Electronic Health Record Interface Design: The PedOne System

The national mandate to develop a national health information network (NHIN) requires the design and implementation of interoperable electronic health record (EHR) systems in hospitals, insurance carriers, urgent care, hospices, and private practices. First movers provide reference implementations and help guide the discussion of further NHIN building blocks. This paper discusses interface considerations in a Web-based pediatric EHR system, PedOnetrade that provides scheduling, billing, and doctor and nurse interview capabilities. The interface is based on a user-centric model and seeks to capture practice workflow in an intuitive manner. PedOnetrade uses open standards to ensure interoperability and conform to stated NHIN design goals. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the current implementation might evolve as more pieces of the NHIN fall into place

An evaluation of the chat and knowledge delivery components of a low-level dialog system: The AZ-ALICE experiment

An effective networked knowledge delivery platform is one of the Holy Grails of Web computing. Knowledge delivery approaches range from the heavy and narrow to the light and broad. This paper explores a lightweight and flexible dialog framework based on the ALICE system, and evaluates its performance in chat and knowledge delivery using both a conversational setting and a specific telecommunications knowledge domain. Metrics for evaluation are presented, and the evaluations of three experimental systems (a pure dialog system, a domain knowledge system, and a hybrid system combining dialog and domain knowledge) are presented and discussed. Our study of 257 subjects shows approximately a 20% user correction rate on system responses. Certain error classes (such as nonsense replies) were particular to the dialog system, while others (such as mistaking opinion questions for definition questions) were particular to the domain system. A third type of error, wordy and awkward responses, is a basic system property and spans all three experimental systems. We also show that the highest response satisfaction results are obtained when coupling domain-specific knowledge together with conversational dialog.

A framework for virtual community business success: the case of the Internet Chess Club

Prior work has identified, in piecemeal fashion, desirable characteristics of virtual community businesses (VCBs) such as inimitable information assets, persistent handles fomenting trust, and an economic infrastructure. The present work develops a framework for the success of a subscription-based VCB by taking into account the above elements and considering as well an interplay of the membership (both regular members and volunteers), technical features of the interface, and an evolutionary business model that supports member subgroups as they form. Our framework is applied by an in-depth survey of use and attitude of regular members and volunteers in the Internet Chess Club (ICC), a popular subscription-based VCB. The survey results reveal that key features of the model are supported in the ICC case: member subgroups follow customized communication pathways; a corps of volunteers is supported and recognized, and the custom interface presents clear navigation pathways to the ICCs key large-scale information asset, a multi-million game database contributed by real-world chess Grandmasters who enjoy complimentary ICC membership. We conclude by discussing VCBs in general and how the framework might apply to other domains.

Evaluating the efficacy of a terrorism question/answer system

The TARA Project examined how a trio of modified chatterbots could be used to disseminate terrorism-related information to the general public.

Unified Citation Management and Visualization Using Open Standards: The Open Citation System

Scientific research is hindered when there are artificial barriers preventing efficient and straightforward sharing of bibliographic information. In today’s computing world, the barriers take the form of incompatible bibliographic formats and constraining operating system and vendor dependencies. These incompatible platforms isolate the respective camps. In this paper, we demonstrate and discuss a new approach to unify citation management, called the Open Citation System (OCS). OCS uses open XML standards and Java component technologies. By providing converter tools to migrate citations to a centralized †hub†in BiblioML format (an XML tag set based on the UniMARC standard), we then make use of XML Topic Maps to provide an extensible framework for visualization. We take as an example the ACM Classification Code and show how the OCS system displays citations in a convenient focus + context hyperbolic tree interface. We conclude by discussing future directions planned to extend the OCS system and how open citation management can supply an important piece in our inexorable march towards a worldwide digital library.