That's what friends are for: facilitating 'who knows what' across group boundaries

We describe the design and evaluation of K-net, a social matching system to help people learn 'who knows what' in an organization by matching people with skills with those who need them. Transactive memory theory predicts that K-net will improve individuals' awareness of 'who knows what'. This should lead to improved performance through sharing knowledge across group boundaries. We evaluate K-net in terms of these predictions in an experiment with 41 students in seven groups working on software engineering projects. Accurate recommendations improved awareness of 'who knows what' versus 'random' recommendations, but did not improve performance. Our results highlight issues related to the evaluation of systems for sharing knowledge across group boundaries. Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.3 [Information interfaces and presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces - Computer Supported Cooperative Work General Terms Management, Design, ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: GROUP
• Authors: N. Sadat Shami, Y. Connie Yuan, Dan Cosley, Ling Xia, Geri Gay
• Keywords: Applied Computing, GROUP 2007, Group Boundaries, Sharing Knowledge, Transactive Memory