Event Detail

Fri Oct 15, 2010
5101 Tolman
11 AM–1 PM
Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Bjoern Hartmann (University of California, Berkeley)
Understanding and supporting online expertise sharing

The practice of end-user software development and media authoring is undergoing a fundamental change: users increasingly rely on Web resources such as question answering sites, forums, and example repositories to help them with the design software and interactive digital media. Today, specialized tools are largely lacking for the social exchange of authoring advice: existing Web applications rely on general purpose, plain text communication tools. This lack of domain-specific applications for describing and sharing expertise limits the effectiveness of both production and use of knowledge. The goal of our research is to create a new class of user interfaces for capturing, sharing, and accessing expertise that demonstrably improve productivity for programmers and digital media creators. To reach this objective, we are conducting fieldwork and data analyses to understand current practices around seeking and providing advice online. Informed by this framing, we are developing new sharing techniques that integrate directly into digital authoring tools.