Synthesis
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Social Contexts
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Intelligence Community
Politicians
Voters
First Responders
Civilians in Disasters
Doctors
Patients
Lawyers
Teachers
Students/Families
Communication Needs
• Intelligence Community, First
Responders, Civilians in Disasters
– Many major challenges center around
effective sharing and communication of
information between users and from
officials to citizens.
• Children
– Communicating information in a way
children can understand
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Information Influencers
• Doctors
– Drug Representatives
• Politicians
– Lobbyists
• Voters
– 529s / Special Interest Groups
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Drug Reps / Lobbyists / 529s
• What do these groups provide?
• Why do they do it?
• Why don’t we see similar groups
influencing first responders, lawyers,
teachers, or students?
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Information Providers
• Why to the users accept information
from biased providers (like 529s,
lobbyists, drug reps)?
• What is the parallel for other contexts,
like patients, teachers,
students/families?
• How would you answer this question?
– How does google work?
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Information Challenges
• Much information is too complex for nonexperts to understand
– E.g. a congressional representative who has a
background in law trying to understand the need
to fund a supercollider in a physics lab
• Even for experts, there is too much
information to keep up on
– E.g. Doctors learning about new drugs and
treatments
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More Information Challenges
• Some information is hard to find
because of lack of expertise
– Users don’t even know what to look for
because they don’t know it exists
– E.g. Put together an NSF grant application
• Other information is hard to handle
because there is so much and it can
conflict
– E.g. medical advice online from well
intentioned but ignorant users
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And More Information Challenges
• Answers to some questions are not
contained in one place
– E.g. Find an MP3 of a song that was on the
Billboard top 10 that features a cowbell.
• Other questions have no direct answers
– E.g. For lawyers looking for legal
precedents, there may be no case with
exactly the same circumstances as the one
they are working on
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Information Needs
• Synthesis, summarization, and
simplification of complex ideas
• Aggregation of distributed data
• Effective communication of information
• Access to information sources
• Insight into what information is
authoritative, correct, trustworthy
– Can lead to a need for personalization
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