Tracking Footprints Through an Information Space: Leveraging the Document Selections of Expert Problem Solvers

这个项目的目标是帮助专家问题解决者在一个巨大的、复杂的信息空间中找到所需的信息。重点放在专家解决问题的一个例子上，即医疗保健领域。在这种电子和其他媒体材料的不同集合中进行分类，以找到所需的信息，有时是在时间的压力下，可能是一件艰巨的事情。该项目建议捕获专家使用的信息的踪迹--监测医生在从观察到信息收集到解决特定卫生保健问题的过程中所采取的路径和使用的收集资源。通过捕获与信息搜索和选择相关的人工痕迹信息，可以假设可以更深入地了解用户的行为和使用模式。然后，这些知识可以反馈到新信息环境的设计和开发中。这项工作将由一个跨学科团队进行，该团队由一名专注于医生信息搜索行为的MD和一组专注于提取和使用常规结构化信息的计算机科学家组成。这些方法的有效性将通过波音公司的积极支持在卫生保健以外的领域进行测试，特别是在飞机设计业。

The goal of this project is to help expert problem solvers find needed information in a large, complex information space. The focus is on one example of expert problem solving; the health care field. Sorting through such a heterogeneous collection of electronic and other media materials to find needed information, sometimes under time duress can be formidable. This project proposes to capture the trace of information used by experts - to monitor the paths taken and collection resources used by, in this case physicians, in moving from observation, to information gathering, to solution of a given health care problem. By capturing the artifactual trace information associated with information seeking and selection, it is hypothesized that greater insight can be gained into behaviors of users and patterns of usage. This knowledge can then be fed-back into the design and development of new information environments. The work will be conducted by a cross-disciplinary team comprised of an MD focusing on information seeking behaviors of physicians, and a group of computer scientists focussing on extracting and using regulary structured information. The usefulness of the approaches will be tested in domains other than health care, in particular the aircraft design industry through the active support of the Boeing Corporation.