Research
Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract
In recent years, researchers have found that people often collaborate during information seeking activities. Collaborative information seeking (CIS) is composed of multiple different activities like seeking, sharing, understanding, and using information together. However, most studies of CIS have focused on how people find and retrieve information collaboratively, while overlooking the important question of how people collaboratively understand the information found by different group members. My dissertation focuses on a specific aspect of CIS, namely collaborative sensemaking, which is how people together understand the information found during CIS activities.
The term sensemaking has been used in a variety of
disciplines and simply means 'understanding the meaning of'.
Sensemaking is an important aspect of information seeking tasks.
However,
most of the sensemaking research has been at the individual level and
there is
little understanding of how sensemaking takes place in collaborative
work,
specifically collaborative information seeking.
In my dissertation, I address two important gaps in current research on sensemaking in CIS activities. First, there is a lack of conceptual understanding about why and how people collaborate to understand the information found during CIS activities. Second, developers of collaborative information retrieval tools have rarely focused on helping users of such tools make sense of the information found.
To address these research gaps I undertook a multi-method research approach in which I conducted two studies in two different CIS domains. The first was an ethnographic study of the CIS activities of healthcare providers working in the emergency department of a large teaching hospital. In this study, I used qualitative methods like interviews, observations, shadowing, and artifacts collection to examine how groups collaboratively find, understand, and use information in a highly collaborative and information-intensive environment. The second study was conducted in the domain of collaborative Web search where I examined the search and sensemaking behavior of users of collaborative Web search tools. Through lab studies and the development of a tool, CoSense, I examined how collaborative sensemaking can be supported during Web search tasks.
Through these studies, I provide two important contributions to our understanding of sensemaking in CIS activities. First, I expand our conceptual understanding of collaborative sensemaking by highlighting the occasions and characteristics of collaborative sensemaking in CIS activities and by presenting a framework of collaborative sensemaking. Second, I provide insight into the design-features that can support sensemaking in collaborative information retrieval tools and also the challenges in designing such features.
In my dissertation, I address two important gaps in current research on sensemaking in CIS activities. First, there is a lack of conceptual understanding about why and how people collaborate to understand the information found during CIS activities. Second, developers of collaborative information retrieval tools have rarely focused on helping users of such tools make sense of the information found.
To address these research gaps I undertook a multi-method research approach in which I conducted two studies in two different CIS domains. The first was an ethnographic study of the CIS activities of healthcare providers working in the emergency department of a large teaching hospital. In this study, I used qualitative methods like interviews, observations, shadowing, and artifacts collection to examine how groups collaboratively find, understand, and use information in a highly collaborative and information-intensive environment. The second study was conducted in the domain of collaborative Web search where I examined the search and sensemaking behavior of users of collaborative Web search tools. Through lab studies and the development of a tool, CoSense, I examined how collaborative sensemaking can be supported during Web search tasks.
Through these studies, I provide two important contributions to our understanding of sensemaking in CIS activities. First, I expand our conceptual understanding of collaborative sensemaking by highlighting the occasions and characteristics of collaborative sensemaking in CIS activities and by presenting a framework of collaborative sensemaking. Second, I provide insight into the design-features that can support sensemaking in collaborative information retrieval tools and also the challenges in designing such features.
Research interests
1. Understanding and supporting collaborative sensemakingI am fascinated by how
people
make sense of the large amounts of information they encounter in their
personal and professional lives, of the situations they face in their
work, and of their social interactions.
Often, this process of sensemaking
(Weick, 1995; Russell, 1993) requires pooling of information from
various sources, as well as interacting with others.
I am specifically interested in sensemaking in collaborative work. While sensemaking has been discussed at the individual level many diverse fields, there is little understanding of sensemaking at the group level. Most models of sensemaking have modeled it as part of individual information seeking activities. Drawing on literature in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), HCI, organizational science, and information sciences, I explore how sensemaking takes place during collaborative information seeking activities.
For my dissertation, I conducted an ethnographic study of collaborative sensemaking among healthcare providers in the Emergency Department of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. A challenging aspect of the work of doctors, nurses, and other clinical and non-clinical staff in the emergency department is making sense of dynamic and unfamiliar situations using a variety of information sources. I drew on my ethnographic study to provide insights into how interfaces can be designed to support sensemaking during collaborative information seeking tasks.
I am specifically interested in sensemaking in collaborative work. While sensemaking has been discussed at the individual level many diverse fields, there is little understanding of sensemaking at the group level. Most models of sensemaking have modeled it as part of individual information seeking activities. Drawing on literature in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), HCI, organizational science, and information sciences, I explore how sensemaking takes place during collaborative information seeking activities.
For my dissertation, I conducted an ethnographic study of collaborative sensemaking among healthcare providers in the Emergency Department of the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. A challenging aspect of the work of doctors, nurses, and other clinical and non-clinical staff in the emergency department is making sense of dynamic and unfamiliar situations using a variety of information sources. I drew on my ethnographic study to provide insights into how interfaces can be designed to support sensemaking during collaborative information seeking tasks.
Related publications -
[C.5] Paul, S.A., and
Reddy, M. (Accepted).
Understanding Together: Sensemaking in Collaborative Information Seeking.
To appear in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW 2010).
[Acceptance rate 20%]. Nominated
for best paper award
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2008). Information and Communication Tools as Aids to Collaborative Sensemaking. In Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008) Extended Abstracts, Florence, Italy. [Acceptance rate ~38%]
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2008). Collaborative Sensemaking: A Field-study in an Emergency Department. Position paper presented at the Sensemaking workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), Florence, Italy. [Acceptance rate 50%]
Paul, S.A. (2008). Supporting Collaborative Sensemaking in the Emergency Department. Poster presented at the Third Annual iConference 2008, Los Angeles, CA.
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and Abraham, J. (2007) Collaborative Sensemaking during Emergency Crisis Response: How do ICTs Help? Poster presented at the Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP 2007), Sanibel Island, FL.
Cited papers -
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2008). Information and Communication Tools as Aids to Collaborative Sensemaking. In Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008) Extended Abstracts, Florence, Italy. [Acceptance rate ~38%]
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2008). Collaborative Sensemaking: A Field-study in an Emergency Department. Position paper presented at the Sensemaking workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), Florence, Italy. [Acceptance rate 50%]
Paul, S.A. (2008). Supporting Collaborative Sensemaking in the Emergency Department. Poster presented at the Third Annual iConference 2008, Los Angeles, CA.
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and Abraham, J. (2007) Collaborative Sensemaking during Emergency Crisis Response: How do ICTs Help? Poster presented at the Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP 2007), Sanibel Island, FL.
Cited papers -
Weick, K.E. (1995).
Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage
Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, USA.
Russell, D.M., Stefik, M.J. Pirolli, P., Card, S.K. (1993). The Cost Structure of Sensemaking. In Proc. CHI 1993, ACM Press, 269-276.
Russell, D.M., Stefik, M.J. Pirolli, P., Card, S.K. (1993). The Cost Structure of Sensemaking. In Proc. CHI 1993, ACM Press, 269-276.
2. Collaborative and Social Web Search
Collaborative Web search is an
important domain of collaborative information seeking. While most Web
browsers are
designed to support individuals searching for information, people often
search Web sites collaboratively for tasks like planning a family
vacation or
finding health care information (Morris, 2008). With the recent
explosion of Web 2.0 technologies, there has been a lot of interest in
collaborative Web search tools. Such
tools support both implicit collaboration (where the system returns
search results based on data obtained from other users, e.g.
recommender systems) and explicit collaboration (where people
explicitly come together to find information for a joint task). These
tools differ in the level of mediation provided; some tools mediate
only at the UI level (e.g. SearchTogether by Morris and Horvitz, 2007)
while others mediate algorithmically (e.g. Cerchiamo by Pickens, et
al., 2008 combines relevance feedback from multiple people to rank
documents).
'Social' Web search is inspired by the success of the 'wisdom of the crowds' approach of sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and Delicious. The idea here is that other users (friends or other people searching on the same topics) can be a useful resource is helping a user identify relevant search results. Social search tools range from those that let strangers rank a user's search results (e.g. Wikiasearch) to those that leverage the user's trusted circle of friends (e.g. Peerspective).
I am intersted in developing models/tools that succesfully leverage either social networks or the expertise of others performing the same task (such as planning a vacation) or having the same information need (such as looking for cancer treatment options). I'm also interested in examining users' search behavior when using social and collaborative search tools. I would like to explore how the models of social search behavior are different from those of individual search behavior and when and how do users interact with each other during social search. I studied how users make sense of search results found during collaborative and social Web search with Merrie Morris at Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA. We studied how groups find, share, and made sense of information using a collaborative Web search tool called SearchTogether.
Related publications -
Paul, S.A., and Morris, M.R. (Submitted). Sensemaking in Collaborative Web Search. Submitted to the HCI journal special Issue on Sensemaking.
'Social' Web search is inspired by the success of the 'wisdom of the crowds' approach of sites like Wikipedia, Digg, and Delicious. The idea here is that other users (friends or other people searching on the same topics) can be a useful resource is helping a user identify relevant search results. Social search tools range from those that let strangers rank a user's search results (e.g. Wikiasearch) to those that leverage the user's trusted circle of friends (e.g. Peerspective).
I am intersted in developing models/tools that succesfully leverage either social networks or the expertise of others performing the same task (such as planning a vacation) or having the same information need (such as looking for cancer treatment options). I'm also interested in examining users' search behavior when using social and collaborative search tools. I would like to explore how the models of social search behavior are different from those of individual search behavior and when and how do users interact with each other during social search. I studied how users make sense of search results found during collaborative and social Web search with Merrie Morris at Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA. We studied how groups find, share, and made sense of information using a collaborative Web search tool called SearchTogether.
Related publications -
Paul, S.A., and Morris, M.R. (Submitted). Sensemaking in Collaborative Web Search. Submitted to the HCI journal special Issue on Sensemaking.
Paul, S.A.,
and Morris, M.R.
(2009). CoSense: Enhancing Sensemaking for
Collaborative Web
Search. To appear in Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI 2009), Boston, MA. [Acceptance rate 24%]. Nominated
for best paper award.
Paul, S.A., and Morris, M.R. (2009). Understanding and Supporting Sensemaking in Collaborative Web Search. To be presented at the Sensemaking workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), Boston, MA. [Acceptance rate 66%]. .
Paul, S.A., and Morris, M.R. (2009). Understanding and Supporting Sensemaking in Collaborative Web Search. To be presented at the Sensemaking workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), Boston, MA. [Acceptance rate 66%]. .
Cited papers -
Morris, M.R. (2008). A Survey of Collaborative Web Search Practices. In Proc of CHI 2008, ACM Press, 1657-1660.
Morris, M.R. and Horvitz, E. (2007). SearchTogether: An Interface for Collaborative Web Search. In Proc of UIST 2007, ACM Press, 3-12.
Pickens, J. Golovchinsky, G., Shah, C., Qvarfordt, P., and Back, M. (2008). Algorithmic Mediation for Collaborative Exploratory Search. Proc of SIGIR 2008, ACM Press, 315-322.
3. Collaborative information seeking, inter-group information flows, and group decision-making
Traditionally, information seeking
has been considered an individual acitivity and most information
seeking models focus on the individual information seeker, as do most
information retrieval tools like Web browsers. In recent years,
researchers (Twidale et. al., 1997; Hansen and Jarvelin, 2005; Reddy et
al. 2007) have uncovered the collaborative nature of information
seeking in domains ranging from library use to hospital intensive care
units.
However, there is still a lack of understanding of how people come together to find and use information and how effective interfaces can be designed to support them. One my research interests is in understanding how technology can be used to support coordination between groups engaged in information-intensive work, with a specific focus on improving information flows and decision-making. I have been focusing on how groups find, seek, share, and use information in two domains. The first is among healthcare providers engaged in emergency care where I study the information needs of emergency care providers and how they collaborate to find information to fulfil these needs. The other is in the domain of collaborative Web search (see section (3) below).
Related publications -
Reddy, M., Paul, S.A., Abraham, J., McNeese, M.D., deFlitch, C.J., and Yen, J. (In Press). Challenges to Effective Crisis Management: Using Information and Communication Tools to Coordinate Emergency Medical Services and Emergency Department Teams. To appear in the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI).
Zhu, S., Abraham, J., Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., Yen, J., Pfaff, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2007). R-CAST-MED: Applying Intelligent Agents to Support Emergency Medical Decision Making Teams. Proceedings of the 11th Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Conference (AIME 2007), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [Acceptance rate ~20%]
However, there is still a lack of understanding of how people come together to find and use information and how effective interfaces can be designed to support them. One my research interests is in understanding how technology can be used to support coordination between groups engaged in information-intensive work, with a specific focus on improving information flows and decision-making. I have been focusing on how groups find, seek, share, and use information in two domains. The first is among healthcare providers engaged in emergency care where I study the information needs of emergency care providers and how they collaborate to find information to fulfil these needs. The other is in the domain of collaborative Web search (see section (3) below).
Related publications -
Reddy, M., Paul, S.A., Abraham, J., McNeese, M.D., deFlitch, C.J., and Yen, J. (In Press). Challenges to Effective Crisis Management: Using Information and Communication Tools to Coordinate Emergency Medical Services and Emergency Department Teams. To appear in the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI).
Zhu, S., Abraham, J., Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., Yen, J., Pfaff, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2007). R-CAST-MED: Applying Intelligent Agents to Support Emergency Medical Decision Making Teams. Proceedings of the 11th Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Conference (AIME 2007), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [Acceptance rate ~20%]
Cited papers -
Twidale, M., Nichols, D. and Paice, C. (1997). Browsing is a Collaborative Process. Information Processing and Management, 33(6), 761-783.
Hansen, P., and Jarvelin, K. (2005). Collaborative Information Retrieval in an Information-intensive Domain. Information Processing and Management, 41, 1101-1119.
Reddy, M.C. and Jansen, B.J. (2008). A Model for Understanding Collaborative Information Behavior in Context: A Study of Two Healthcare Teams. Information Processing and Management, 44, 256-273.
Twidale, M., Nichols, D. and Paice, C. (1997). Browsing is a Collaborative Process. Information Processing and Management, 33(6), 761-783.
Hansen, P., and Jarvelin, K. (2005). Collaborative Information Retrieval in an Information-intensive Domain. Information Processing and Management, 41, 1101-1119.
Reddy, M.C. and Jansen, B.J. (2008). A Model for Understanding Collaborative Information Behavior in Context: A Study of Two Healthcare Teams. Information Processing and Management, 44, 256-273.