Providing Social Feedback in Information Work

在信息工作中提供社会反馈

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-04227
• 负责人: Bateman, Scott
• 金额: $ 1.82万
• 依托单位: University of New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=634731
• 关键词: Providing; Social; Feedback; Information; Work

Information tools (such as programming environments, web applications, or word processors) are used by people everyday to complete a wide variety of tasks. While people often learn how to complete tasks using their information tools, they most often make do with novice skills or basic knowledge. Without higher levels of expertise many people are not able to perform as well as they potentially could, which can lead to work that is slower and of lower quality. While a number of solutions exist to ease the transition from novice to expert (e.g., tutorials), a critical factor in learning and behaviour change is people’s perception of whether new behaviour and skills have been successfully used by others. The problem addressed by this proposal is that current information tools do not provide appropriate support for people to learn from the strategies and techniques that have been successful for other people. Without this support people will continue to complete tasks in an inefficient manner. To address this problem, this research will apply the idea of social feedback – support derived from the captured behaviour of other information workers. Social feedback builds on theories of how people learn from others, and how people can be persuaded and motivated to adopt new behaviour when using technology. A social feedback tool provides support by following three basic steps: it captures usage behaviour from a group of people as they use an application; it identifies expert skills and desirable behaviour from the captured data; and, finally, by visualizing this data it allows people to see how their skills compare to experts and to learn how they might improve. While social feedback can allow people to complete common tasks more efficiently and with higher quality outcomes, research in this area is still limited. In particular, this research tackles three challenges to the successful deployment of social feedback systems: 1) the requirement for feedback to be provided at the right time and place in order for it to be useful; 2) the difficulty people have with recalling newly learned skills and behaviour; and, 3) the challenge of motivating people to learn new skills and improve their expertise. This proposal contains six separate projects that investigate these challenges within three new application domains (crowdsourcing, programmer education and energy consumption). This research has strong potential to provide economic and social benefits to many types of work where information tools are used. We will create several technologies that provide data-collection mechanisms, visualization techniques, and design guidelines that allow developers to add social feedback into their existing software. We will also demonstrate the use of social feedback in three specific areas of high interest to the general public and to my industrial partners, who will play an important role in contributing to this work. This research will provide opportunities for HQP to receive training in cutting-edge technologies based in the domains of application, and position them well for further training or advanced positions within industry. This work will advance the understanding of social feedback systems by providing new mechanisms for people to improve their skills with information tools, which will have a positive impact on their productivity and everyday work experiences.

信息工具（如编程环境，Web应用程序或文字处理器）每天被人们用来完成各种各样的任务。虽然人们经常学习如何使用信息工具完成任务，但他们最常使用新手技能或基本知识。如果没有更高水平的专业知识，许多人就无法尽可能地表现出色，这可能导致工作速度更慢，质量更低。虽然存在许多解决方案来缓解从新手到专家的转变（例如，学习和行为改变的一个关键因素是人们对新的行为和技能是否已被他人成功使用的看法。这一建议所针对的问题是，目前的信息工具没有为人们提供适当的支持，使他们能够学习对其他人来说已经取得成功的战略和技术。没有这种支持，人们将继续以低效率的方式完成任务。为了解决这个问题，这项研究将应用社会反馈的想法-支持来自其他信息工作者的捕获行为。社会反馈建立在人们如何向他人学习的理论基础上，以及如何说服和激励人们在使用技术时采取新的行为。社交反馈工具通过以下三个基本步骤提供支持：它在一群人使用应用程序时捕获他们的使用行为;它从捕获的数据中识别专家技能和理想行为;最后，通过可视化这些数据，它允许人们看到他们的技能与专家相比如何，并了解他们如何改进。虽然社会反馈可以让人们更有效地完成共同的任务，并取得更高质量的成果，但这方面的研究仍然有限。特别是，这项研究解决了成功部署社会反馈系统的三个挑战：1）在正确的时间和地点提供反馈的要求，以便它是有用的; 2）人们在回忆新学到的技能和行为的困难;和，3）激励人们学习新技能和提高他们的专业知识的挑战。该提案包含六个独立的项目，在三个新的应用领域（众包，程序员教育和能源消耗）调查这些挑战。这项研究具有很大的潜力，可以为使用信息工具的许多类型的工作提供经济和社会效益。我们将创建几种技术，提供数据收集机制，可视化技术和设计指南，允许开发人员将社会反馈添加到现有的软件中。我们还将在公众和我的工业合作伙伴高度关注的三个特定领域展示社会反馈的使用，他们将在这项工作中发挥重要作用。这项研究将为HQP提供机会，接受基于应用领域的尖端技术培训，并为他们在行业内的进一步培训或高级职位做好准备。这项工作将通过为人们提供新的机制来提高他们使用信息工具的技能，从而促进对社会反馈系统的理解，这将对他们的生产力和日常工作经验产生积极影响。