Design Process
Introduction
In order to start fleshing out the details of our design, we generated a sketch of what a user's workflow might be when using the system. We utilized both the knowledge retrieval model as well as our primary millennial personas when creating this workflow. Since the workflow involves our personas, it is best prefaced by the following scenario: Jason has been asked by his team's clients to come up with new marketing strategies, and, though he is not knowledgeable about viral marketing, thinks he can find someone else within the company who can help him as he thinks this strategy might benefit the client's campaign.
Jason's primary intent in using the system is then to find out more about viral marketing. In order to accomplish this intent he has three other sub-intents', namely, A) to input viral marketing into the system (step 1 of the knowledge retrieval model); B) to choose someone in the company to contact (steps 2-4); and C) to decide how to contact that person (step 5). Solely looking at the number of steps involved, we can see that choosing someone in the company to contact (sub-intent B) requires the most thought for Jason. Also, if one sub-intent cannot be accomplished then Jason must redo the previous sub-intent (e.g. if Jason is unable to contact person X, he will look for someone else in the company; if he can't find someone in the company, he will try entering a different search term into the system).
Looking at this workflow, we recognized that solutions already exist that try and solve the primary intent of expertise-finding that Jason has. Because of our background research, however, we knew that the problem still exists in companies today, and that there are many workarounds to try and solve it data repositories (e.g. wikis) to try and capture project information, online social network systems to try and bring employees closer together, company portals to try and capture company policies. Thus, we conducted another competitive analysis at a high-level but with a focus on knowledge sharing, in order to identify which parts of the workflow revealed areas of opportunity.
Areas of Opportunity
When we map the features of the existing solutions onto our workflow, we see that there is room for improvement in the following areas:
1. Providing new methods for inputting the search term and browsing peoples' expertise
While all the solutions allow for a direct text search on a particular knowledge topic, none of them easily facilitate finding experts of topics whose keywords are not familiar to the user. For example, a user may be aware of marketing but not familiar with the terms for the difference facets of marketing. A system that assists users in specifying what area of knowledge they want to search for (e.g. through suggestions) would be beneficial to the user.
2. Presenting a visualization that assists with deciding who to contact
In a large company, it can be difficult finding the person that can give the user the right information to get the job done. By presenting the user with more context about these experts (e.g. through a semantic map of their expertise and their connections to the user), they should be able to make more informed decisions before they contact the knowledgeable person.
3. Providing alternate connections/paths to a user's contact
When the user does not directly know the knowledgeable person, they often go through the people they do know within the company in order to get introduced. However, there may be cases where it might not be appropriate to go through a certain contact, in which case it would be helpful for the user to see alternate connections. At the moment, only Visible Path makes it explicit that this can be done, and we see this as being a valuable feature for the user. In particular, it could be useful to know the nature of how people are connected between the user and the knowledgeable person.
4. Presenting the physical location, availability, and communication preferences of employees
While all the corporate solutions give the contact information of the knowledgeable person, there is almost no information about the immediate availability and location of that person. Furthermore, there is no real guarantee that the person will promptly respond to an e-mail that is sent by the user. By providing the user with this information, they can decide by what method they should contact the person, and may even choose to contact another person based on whether they are more likely to respond to a phone call than an e-mail.
5. Conveying informal rules within the company
Although not directly addressed by the corporate solutions we analyzed, this was an area that frequently arose in our background research. Organizational units (teams, departments, companies, etc.) will have their own sets of norms and rules that are not necessarily apparent to people outside of that unit or even to new hires. Within the context of knowledge sharing, a system that could convey, for example, that the department head is actually an approachable person willing to spend time with those lower down in the organization chart would be useful to the user in that it could either expedite their expertise-finding or help avoid potential embarrassments.
Based on these areas of opportunity, we started creating wireframes of what our system might be like.
