The Interface of

the Knowing

Organization

November 21, 2009Toronto, Ontario

v02 (2009-11-21)

Stuart G. M. Bailey

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Outline

• What’s the Problem?

• Mental Models

• Cases in Point

• Conclusions

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Introduction• Operations and

Disruptions– Zubulake, Phillip

Morris, Morgan Stanley, B.C. Rail

• Exploding Information Volumes

• Users and Technology

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Web 2.0

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ConclusionA weak user interface results in

Poor compliance

• Legal• Audit• Governance

A reduced ability to

• Operate well• Develop self-

knowledge

Identify and mitigate

• Risk• Costs

Learn and adapt• Changing workforce• Changing

regulations• Changing

marketplace

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What’s the Problem?

• We all manage information

• This gives users great power

• Power can enable or power can disrupt

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Storage and Recall

• Storage may well be cheap, but finding is very expensive.

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Globe and Mail

• Content in Context– What to keep, what

to get rid of?

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How Small are Small Differences?

“A few bad apples…”Small differences early on can create vast distances later on

Positive Deviance

Best practices might not affect positive change since behaviour is the key factor in whether groups deviate towards positive results or not.

The goal is replicating the practices of the positive deviants.

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Interface

Vannevar’s Bush’s Memex c.1945

"As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly, July, 1945. Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine c. 1823

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InterfaceCompliance and the ability to operate well are enhanced by an effective user interface.

A weak interface between user and information means that an organization cannot come to know itself.

http://www.pranavmistry.com/

Microsoft’s “Surface”

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InterfaceGood user interface improves access and recall of important information.

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/socialaction/

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Planning and Execution

Awareness, training, tools, and processes affect an organization’s ability to

operate efficiently.

How users interact with technology should not be

overlooked.

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Types of Knowledge

Tacit – what we say

Explicit – what we write down

Cultural – what we do together

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Talking

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Writing

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Knowing

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Accessing Content

• A knowing organization needs a stable, reliable, repeatable process for discovering content that has meaning to it (or its workers)

Taxonomy

- Provides Order

Controls

- Structure Access

Culture

- Use of common orders and controls

Technology

Users

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Design

Design not for the distance between the screen and the eye, but for the distance between the eye and the brain.

– Ben Schneiderman

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Mental Models

• Schopenhauer– Optical model for

consciousness– Optical : user

interface– Interface : knowing

organization

From the day you were born, you have been making sense of the world.

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Representing Relationships

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Case StudiesE-mail and E-mail Archiving Tools

http://www.symantec.com/business/enterprise-vault

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Other solutions

• User-integrated

(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=136949)

• Open Text and SharePoint

• Integrated for the user

• Google Wave

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Augmented Reality

www.layar.comLayar; recovery.gov• iPhone, PalmPre, etc

overlay data with real world (geo-coding and gps)

• Smartphones bring multiple apps together in a single interface

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The Differences

• User control of recall from repository.

• Interface used for knowledge workers to interact with explicit content.

Users need help getting to a point where they can ‘figure out what works’.

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Conclusion

• Organizations need to know something about themselves in order to respond to external and internal needs.

• Knowing requires an effective interface between repositories and users or information (even when users are considered repositories).

• When interfaces are weak, the organization cannot know itself as well and may therefore face increased (operating) costs, risks, or interruptions.

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Remember:

The technology might work perfectly…