REQUIREMENTS FOR PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

REQUIREMENTS FOR PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS Max Völkel , Andreas Abecker FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe 11.06.2010

Personal Knowledge Management?
Why?
The knowledge-based organisation is no more effective than the sum of its knowledge workers’ effectiveness.
Davenport, 2004

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
What?
PKM is
a set of concepts, disciplines and tools
for organizing often previously unstructured knowledge,
to help individuals take responsibility
for what they know and who they know
European guide to good practice in knowledge management CWA 14924-1:2004 E, part 5, p. 12. European Committee for Standardization, 2004

Focus of this talk: PKM Tools
Organize often previously unstructured knowledge
Support personal note-taking
Extend the human memory by information management
Make knowledge workers more productive
Many PKM tools have been built and even more tools are (ab-)used for PKM tasks.
How to build a good PKM tool?

Analyze what knowledge workers do
What is note-taking?
Creating an external reminder (a note, a knowledge cue ) to help a person coming back to a previously experienced mental state (knowing something).
What is a knowledge cue?
Definition: A knowledge cue is either
a piece of content , containing
plain text,
semi-structured text, or
arbitrary binary content
such as images or desktop objects, or
a connection between other knowledge cues.
Such connections can be unspecified relations, directed hyperlinks and formal statements.

Knowledge-Cue Life Cycle

Economic Analysis
Goals:
Low costs
High benefit

Requirements for...
(Conceptual) model vs.
Tool

Req for model: Knowledge model should be a superset of existing conceptual models
To reuse content residing in one kind of representation in another tool, it needs to be transformed.
Convert between n formalisms?
Naive: n 2 transformations
Common intermediate formalism: 2n transformations
Learning a new tool
 user needs to understand the conceptual model of the tool
 Formalism of good PKM tool should be similar to existing models

Req: System should run queries automatically
Tool requirement

Req: Easy to learn
Model and tool requirement:
Seems obvious
However, riding a bicycle is not easy to learn
Long-term cost/benefit is relevant

What kind of notes?
Model and tool requirement:
Req: User decides on modeling granularity
Allow very short notes
Allow very long (and structured) notes
Less different tools have to be used
Req: Informal articulation
Allow user to be informal  lower costs (lower benefit)
Req: Formal articulation
Allow user to be formal  more benefit (higher costs)
Req: Simultaneous use of different levels of formality
Req: Stepwise formalization

Req: Versioning
Allow errors and make it easy to fix them
Never loose any keystroke
However, versioning and retrieval is hard

Interaction for codify and augment process
Model and tool requirements:
Req: Entities need to be addressable
Neglected by many tools!
Req: Capture the context for cue creation and import

Interaction for codify and augment process
Tool requirements
Req: Fast entry
Otherwise knowledge model remains empty
Req: Knowledge model refactoring
Or model gets cluttered
This includes deleting content
Req: Active assistance in maintenance tasks
“ This is older than…. and has been accessed less than … times …”
“ This has been searched … times and each time it took (very long)”

Ways of adding structure and formality
Grouping of items
Containment relationship
Optional naming of knowledge cues
Alternative names
Order knowledge cues
Linking
Hierarchy
Annotating content
Tagging
Classifying items into categories
Tool requirements
Simultaneous use of multiple levels of detail
Source: Analysis of conceptual models of PKM tools preverbal verbal formal

Interaction for retrieval process
Queries
Full-text, semantic, combined
Browsing (=scanning lists) and following links
Inverse relations

Expressivity
Flexible schema
Structured queries
Adaptation to domains
Transclusion
Avoid copy & paste
Meta-modeling
Self-describing model

List 1

List 2

Conclusions
Long requirements list can be used
As design specification and research agenda for PKM tool builders
To assess the suitability of existing tools for PKM
Core requirements:
Trade-off authoring costs and retrieval value
Step-wise formalization
Unified knowledge model

Try http:// iMapping .info
Extends listed requirements with spatial concepts
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement

REQUIREMENTS FOR PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

by Max Völkel

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

REQUIREMENTS FOR PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS Presentation Transcript