Sharoda A. Paul

CoSense: enhancing sensemaking for collaborative web search

Making sense of the information found during an investigational Web search task can be daunting. With the recent emergence of tools to support collaborative Web search, the associated sensemaking task has become even more complex, requiring sense to be made not only of the products of a search (i.e., results found) but of the process, as well (i.e., group division of labor and decision-making). We present the findings of a formative study illustrating the sensemaking challenges posed by collaborative search tools. Based on these findings, we created CoSense, a system that supports sensemaking for collaborative Web search tasks by providing several rich, interactive views of a groups search activities. We describe an evaluation of CoSense, reflecting on how its features supported different aspects of sensemaking, and how future collaborative search systems can benefit from these findings.

Understanding together: sensemaking in collaborative information seeking

An important aspect of collaborative information seeking (CIS) is making sense of the information found, i.e., collaborative sensemaking. We conducted an ethnographic study of the CIS practices of healthcare providers in a hospital emergency department to gain a conceptual understanding of when and how collaborative sensemaking occurs during CIS activities. We present occasions and characteristics of collaborative sensemaking and design implications for collaborative information retrieval tools to support sensemaking.

Challenges to effective crisis management: Using information and communication technologies to coordinate emergency medical services and emergency department teams

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study is to identify the major challenges to coordination between emergency department (ED) teams and emergency medical services (EMS) teams. DESIGN We conducted a series of focus groups involving both ED and EMS team members using a crisis scenario as the basis of the focus group discussion. We also collected organizational workflow data. RESULTS We identified three major challenges to coordination between ED and EMS teams including ineffectiveness of current information and communication technologies, lack of common ground, and breakdowns in information flow. DISCUSSION The three challenges highlight the importance of designing systems from socio-technical perspective. In particular, these inter-team coordination systems must support socio-technical issues such as awareness, context, and workflow between the two teams.

A Systematic Review of Simulation Studies Investigating Emergency Department Overcrowding

The problem of emergency department (ED) overcrowding has reached crisis proportions in the last decade. In 2005, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine reported on the important role of simulation as a systems analysis tool that can have an impact on care processes at the care-team, organizational, and environmental levels. Simulation has been widely used to understand causes of ED overcrowding and to test interventions to alleviate its effects. In this paper, we present a systematic review of ED simulation literature from 1970 to 2006 from healthcare, systems engineering, operations research and computer science publication venues. The goals of this review are to highlight the contributions of these simulation studies to our understanding of ED overcrowding and to discuss how simulation can be better used as a tool to address this problem. We found that simulation studies provide important insights into ED overcrowding but they also had major limitations that must be addressed.

Sensemaking in Collaborative Web Search

Sensemaking is an important aspect of information-seeking tasks but has mostly been studied at the individual level. We conducted a study of sensemaking in collaborative Web search using SearchTogether and found that collaborators face several challenges in making sense of information during collaborative search tasks. We built and evaluated a new tool, CoSense, which enhanced sensemaking in SearchTogether. The evaluation of CoSense provided insights into how collaborative sensemaking differed from individual sensemaking in terms of the different kinds of information that collaborators needed to make sense of. In this article we discuss findings about how sensemaking occurs in synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and the challenges participants face in handling handoffs. We found that participants had two different strategies of handling handoffs—search-lead and sensemaking-lead—and that participants with these two strategies exhibited different procedural knowledge of sensemaking. We also discuss how complex and varied the products of sensemaking are during a collaborative search task. Through our evaluation of CoSense we provide insights into the design of tools that can enhance sensemaking in collaborative search tasks.

R-CAST-MED: Applying Intelligent Agents to Support Emergency Medical Decision-Making Teams

Decision-making is a crucial aspect of emergency response during mass casualty incidents (MCIs). MCIs require rapid decisions to be taken by geographically-dispersed teams in an environment characterized by insufficient information, ineffective collaboration and inadequate resources. Despite the increasing adoption of decision support systems in healthcare, there is limited evidence of their value in large-scale disasters. We conducted focus groups with emergency medical services and emergency department personnel who revealed that one of the main challenges in emergency response during MCIs is information management. Therefore, to alleviate the issues arising from ineffective information management, we propose R-CAST-MED, an intelligent agent architecture built on Recognition-Primed Decision-making (RPD) and Shared Mental Models (SMMs). A simulation of R-CAST-MED showed that this tool enabled efficient information management by identifying relevant information, inferring missing information and sharing information with other agents, which led to effective collaboration and coordination of tasks across teams.

Information and communication tools as aids to collaborative sensemaking

Collaborative sensemaking occurs when multiple actors engage in understanding an unfamiliar, information-rich environment. We present preliminary results from a field study of the collaborative activities of healthcare providers in an emergency department. The goal of our study was to explore the nature of collaborative sensemaking and the role various information and communication tools play in the process. We describe how paper, whiteboards, and the computerized provider order entry system support common external representations to enhance collaborative sensemaking; but at the same time gaps in collaborative sensemaking occur, leading to representation shifts.

Understanding enterprise integration project risks: A focus group study

The prerequisites of success and reasons for failure for enterprise integration projects are still not well-understood as evidenced by large failure rates, including cost or schedule overruns, abandoned projects, and projects delivered with diminished functionality. These failures point to the inherently human activities of planning and overseeing that are critical to successful large-scale integration. In spite of a rich stream of research on systems development risks, few research efforts have attempted to understand enterprise integration risks. This paper reports preliminary findings, based on an analysis of data gathered via focus groups at an organization poised to embark on an integration project, about how organizational participants perceive these risks. The analysis shows that risk perception is fuzzy, it differs significantly across organizational actors, and points to considerable information asymmetry between risk managers and project participants.

Apples to oranges?: comparing across studies of open collaboration/peer production

This panel seeks to begin a discussion of how we can meaningfully compare and contrast between the diverse instances of open collaboration and peer production employed on the Internet today. Current research on the topic have tended to be too platform - (e.g. Wikipedia) or domain - (e.g. Open source) specific. The panelists will be tasked with addressing this problem using their own expertise and research projects to bear on the issue. Ultimately, the panel will seek to lay the foundations for the development of theoretical frameworks and principles for the design and application of open collaboration and CBPP based systems.

An Empirical Analysis of Development Processes for Anticipatory Standards

There is an evolution in the process used by standards-development organizations (SDOs) and this is changing the prevailing standards development activity (SDA) for information and communications technology (ICT). The process is progressing from traditional SDA modes, typically involving the selection from many candidate, existing alternative components, into the crafting of standards that include a substantial design component (SSDC), or “anticipatory” standards. SSDC require increasingly important roles from organizational players as well as SDOs. Few theoretical frameworks exist to understand these emerging processes. This project conducted archival analysis of SDO documents for a selected subset of web-services (WS) standards taken from publicly available sources including minutes of meetings, proposals, drafts and recommendations. This working paper provides a deeper understanding of SDAs, the roles played by different organizational participants and the compliance with SDO due process requirements emerging from public policy constraints, recent legislation and standards accreditation requirements. This research is influenced by a recent theoretical framework that suggests viewing the new standards-setting processes as a complex interplay among three forces: sense-making, design, and negotiation (DSN). The DSN model provides the framework for measuring SDO progress and therefore understanding future generations of standards development processes. The empirically grounded results are useful foundation for other SDO modeling efforts.