Toolkit for Role-aware Exchange of Knowledge

Real-time collaboration often involves fluid, dynamic assignment of responsibilities within a community of users. As a task develops, users are asked to fulfill a variety of roles that shape their interaction with the system. Each role may have different information needs, possibilities for action, and skill requirements. However, existing collaborative software does not generally take into account the role(s) a user is fulfilling when the interaction of the system is designed; additionally, systems that do provide tailored, role-specific interfaces do not provide capabilities for fluid role membership, role creation, or on-the-fly transitioning of roles from user to user. To address these concerns, we propose developing a Toolkit for Role-aware Exchange of Knowledge (TREK), supporting development of collaborative, real-time, role-based information-sharing systems. Our target domain for the Phase I work will be Time-sensitive Targeting, a complex real-time task domain involving a variety of interrelated roles and numerous sources of noisy and uncertain information. The domain offers challenges to the users in making decisions, building a consensus, and executing fateful tasks in a rapid, effective fashion. TREK will make use of in-house expertise in knowledge modeling, user modeling, and information presentation to provide cutting-edge technological solutions to these complexities.