Understanding and Supporting Collaborative Sensemaking in Collaborative Information Seeking.

PhDWith the ubiquity of current information retrieval systems, users move beyond individual searching to performing complex and exploratory information seeking tasks together with collaborators for social, leisure or professional purposes. As a consequence, collaborative information seeking (CIS) systems become popular to support users for CIS tasks. These CIS systems aimed at enhancing the awareness of each others activities between collaborators but provide little support for collaborative sensemaking of the CIS task and related information together. To design tools for collaborative sensemaking, we lack an understanding of how users perform collaborative sensemaking and what support they need for collaborative sensemaking in CIS. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to understand user strategies for collaborative sensemaking and the challenges they face in collaborative sensemaking, and to design tools to support collaborative sensemaking in CIS. In this thesis, we first present an exploratory study that investigates how users perform collaborative sensemaking, and the challenges they encountered in CIS. A follow-up study then compared the collaborative sensemaking behaviour and challenges users encountered between different CIS tasks. Through a comparative analysis, we acquired an understanding of the difference of collaborative sensemaking behaviour according to task as well as the general patterns in collaborative sensemaking behaviour and the challenges that users face. Based on the findings from our user studies, we proposed and designed a tool MakeSenseTogether, with novel topic-related features, to support collaborative sensemaking behaviour. An evaluation study of MakeSenseTogether shows that the topic-related features improved user experience of collaborative sensemaking in CIS. This thesis contributes to our understanding of collaborative sensemaking in CIS in two ways. Firstly, we gain a comprehensive understanding of the general process of collaborative sensemaking and the challenges users face. Secondly, we proposed novel topic-related features which can improve users experience in collaborative sensemaking

Sensemaking and Group Relationships in Collaborative Exploratory Search

This study investigates the information seeking and sensemaking processes undertaken by groups engaged in collaborative exploratory searches. A second research question was what, if any, role the familiarity of the group members with each other had on how sensemaking occurred. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, and each participant was asked to describe two collaborative search experiences, one with friends or family who they knew well, and one with an assigned group for school or work. Participants' experiences matched up well with existing information seeking models and current sensemaking models, but highlighted the importance of extensive use of artifacts and in-person communication as behaviors that facilitate sensemaking in a collaborative searching environment

Space for Two to Think: Large, High-Resolution Displays for Co-located Collaborative Sensemaking

Large, high-resolution displays carry the potential to enhance single display groupware collaborative sensemaking for intelligence analysis tasks by providing space for common ground to develop, but it is up to the visual analytics tools to utilize this space effectively. In an exploratory study, we compared two tools (Jigsaw and a document viewer), which were adapted to support multiple input devices, to observe how the large display space was used in establishing and maintaining common ground during an intelligence analysis scenario using 50 textual documents. We discuss the spatial strategies employed by the pairs of participants, which were largely dependent on tool type (data-centric or function-centric), as well as how different visual analytics tools used collaboratively on large, high-resolution displays impact common ground in both process and solution. Using these findings, we suggest design considerations to enable future co-located collaborative sensemaking tools to take advantage of the benefits of collaborating on large, high-resolution displays

Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design.

Given the very large numbers of documents involved in e-discovery investigations, lawyers face a considerable challenge of collaborative sensemaking. We report findings from three workplace studies which looked at different aspects of how this challenge was met. From a sociotechnical perspective, the studies aimed to understand how investigators collectively and individually worked with information to support sensemaking and decision making. Here, we focus on discovery-led refinement; specifically, how engaging with the materials of the investigations led to discoveries that supported refinement of the problems and new strategies for addressing them. These refinements were essential for tractability. We begin with observations which show how new lines of enquiry were recursively embedded. We then analyse the conceptual structure of a line of enquiry and consider how reflecting this in e-discovery support systems might support scalability and group collaboration. We then focus on the individual activity of manual document review where refinement corresponded with the inductive identification of classes of irrelevant and relevant documents within a collection. Our observations point to the effects of priming on dealing with these efficiently and to issues of cognitive ergonomics at the human–computer interface. We use these observations to introduce visualisations that might enable reviewers to deal with such refinements more efficiently

Large High Resolution Displays for Co-Located Collaborative Intelligence Analysis

Large, high-resolution vertical displays carry the potential to increase the accuracy of collaborative sensemaking, given correctly designed visual analytics tools. From an exploratory user study using a fictional intelligence analysis task, we investigated how users interact with the display to construct spatial schemas and externalize information, as well as how they establish shared and private territories. We investigated the spatial strategies of users partitioned by tool type used (document- or entity-centric). We classified the types of territorial behavior exhibited in terms of how the users interacted with the display (integrated or independent workspaces). Next, we examined how territorial behavior impacted the common ground between the pairs of users. Finally, we recommend design guidelines for building co-located collaborative visual analytics tools specifically for use on large, high-resolution vertical displays

You can't always sketch what you want: Understanding Sensemaking in Visual Query Systems

Visual query systems (VQSs) empower users to interactively search for line charts with desired visual patterns, typically specified using intuitive sketch-based interfaces. Despite decades of past work on VQSs, these efforts have not translated to adoption in practice, possibly because VQSs are largely evaluated in unrealistic lab-based settings. To remedy this gap in adoption, we collaborated with experts from three diverse domains---astronomy, genetics, and material science---via a year-long user-centered design process to develop a VQS that supports their workflow and analytical needs, and evaluate how VQSs can be used in practice. Our study results reveal that ad-hoc sketch-only querying is not as commonly used as prior work suggests, since analysts are often unable to precisely express their patterns of interest. In addition, we characterize three essential sensemaking processes supported by our enhanced VQS. We discover that participants employ all three processes, but in different proportions, depending on the analytical needs in each domain. Our findings suggest that all three sensemaking processes must be integrated in order to make future VQSs useful for a wide range of analytical inquiries.Comment: Accepted for presentation at IEEE VAST 2019, to be held October 20-25 in Vancouver, Canada. Paper will also be published in a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) IEEE VIS (InfoVis/VAST/SciVis) 2019 ACM 2012 CCS - Human-centered computing, Visualization, Visualization design and evaluation method

Using personal narratives to explore multiple identities in organisational contexts

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and incorporate personal narratives as a new methodological tool into the qualitative research of complex organisational issues such as identity. Particularly, this study provides a fresh methodological perspective on organisational identity exploration by using personal narratives to examine multiple identities that occur in dynamic organisational contexts. Design/methodology/approach In order to examine multiple identities, personal narratives found in the 43 semi-structured in-depth interviews collected were analysed. These narratives were examined following a textual and performative analysis. Findings The paper furthers methodological discussions in organisations in three ways. First, it responds to the need for a methodological approach that allows multiple identity exploration in organisations while it presents personal narratives as a valuable methodological perspective within organisational research. Second, it extends the methodological use of personal narratives for the in-depth qualitative study of complex organisational issues such as identity. Finally, the study stretches the boundaries of mainstream organisational research by illustrating that personal narratives can be used as a methodological approach to explore organisational identities. Originality/value This research integrates personal narratives as a methodological tool into the qualitative research of dynamic organisational issues. Employing personal narratives has allowed the exploration of multiple identities that take place in organisations in a manner not previously achieved in organisational studies. The study, therefore, challenges previous organisational research and expands the boundaries of organisational identity studies, offering a new qualitative methodological account for identity exploration in organisations