When interfaces between users and applications are weak, organizations face increased risks and costs because they do not know what information they have and cannot find that information they need.

1. The Interface
of the
Knowing
Organization
November 21, 2009
Toronto, Ontario
v02 (2009-11-21)
Stuart G. M. Bailey

2. v02 2009-11-21 Interface of the Knowing Organization 2
Outline
• What’s the Problem?
• Mental Models
• Cases in Point
• Conclusions

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Introduction
• Operations and
Disruptions
– Zubulake, Phillip
Morris, Morgan
Stanley, B.C. Rail
• Exploding Information
Volumes
• Users and
Technology

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Web 2.0

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Conclusion
A weak user interface results in
Poor compliance
• Legal
• Audit
• Governance
A reduced ability to
• Operate well
• Develop self-
knowledge
Identify and mitigate
• Risk
• Costs
Learn and adapt
• Changing workforce
• Changing regulations
• Changing marketplace

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What’s the Problem?
• We all manage
information
• This gives users
great power
• Power can enable
or power can
disrupt

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Storage and Recall
• Storage may well be
cheap, but finding is
very expensive.
0.2
3500
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1500
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Buy Review
Buy v. Review
Globe and
Mail
• Content in Context
– What to keep, what to
get rid of?

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How Small are Small Differences?
“A few bad apples…”
Small differences early on can
create vast distances later on
Positive Deviance
Best practices might not affect positive change since behaviour is the
key factor in whether groups deviate towards positive results or not.
The goal is replicating the practices of the positive deviants.

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Interface
Vannevar’s Bush’s Memex c.1945
"As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly, July, 1945.
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine c. 1823

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Interface
Compliance and the ability to operate well are
enhanced by an effective user interface.
A weak interface between user and information means
that an organization cannot come to know itself.
http://www.pranavmistry.com/
Microsoft’s “Surface”

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Interface
Good user interface improves access and recall of important information.
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/socialaction/

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Planning and Execution
Awareness, training, tools,
and processes affect an
organization’s ability to
operate efficiently.
How users interact with
technology should not be
overlooked.

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Types of Knowledge
Tacit – what we say
Explicit – what we write down
Cultural – what we do together

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Talking

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Writing

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Knowing

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Accessing Content
• A knowing
organization needs
a stable, reliable,
repeatable process
for discovering
content that has
meaning to it (or its
workers)
Taxonomy
- Provides Order
Controls
- Structure Access
Culture
- Use of common orders
and controls
TechnologyUsers

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Design
Design not for the distance between the screen and the eye, but for the
distance between the eye and the brain.
– Ben Schneiderman

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Mental Models
• Schopenhauer
– Optical model for
consciousness
– Optical : user interface
– Interface : knowing
organization
From the day you were born, you have been making sense of the world.

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Representing Relationships

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Case Studies
E-mail and E-mail Archiving Tools
http://www.symantec.com/business/
enterprise-vault
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x y z p q
Time
Volume
Archive
Online

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Other solutions
• User-integrated
(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?
LinkId=136949)
• Open Text and
SharePoint
• Integrated for
the user
• Google Wave

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Augmented Reality
www.layar.com
Layar; recovery.gov
• iPhone, PalmPre, etc
overlay data with real world
(geo-coding and gps)
• Smartphones bring
multiple apps together
in a single interface

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The Differences
• User control of
recall from
repository.
• Interface used for
knowledge workers
to interact with
explicit content.
Users need help getting to a point where they can ‘figure out what works’.

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Conclusion
• Organizations need to know something about
themselves in order to respond to external and
internal needs.
• Knowing requires an effective interface between
repositories and users or information (even
when users are considered repositories).
• When interfaces are weak, the organization
cannot know itself as well and may therefore
face increased (operating) costs, risks, or
interruptions.

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Remember:
The technology might work perfectly…