Presentation for the Workshop on Collaborative Technologies for Working and Learning (EC-TEL meets ECSCW) at 21 September 2013, Paphos (Cyprus)

1. A Sensemaking Interface
for Doctors’ Learning at Work:
A Co-Design Study Using a Paper Prototype
Vladimir Tomberg, Mohammad Al-Smadi,
Tamsin Treasure-Jones, Tobias Ley

2. Learning at the Workplace
• No time to reflect
• No time to learn about experiences
• High workload of general practitioners
• A lot of the valuable experiences get lost, if
the doctors are not remembered or reflected
upon

3. Supporting Sensemaking in Informal
Learning
• Informal learning is episodic in nature
• Episodes of learning experiences are stored in
episodic memory
• Mental categorization requires:
– foraging (information seeking, finding, and collecting)
– sensemaking (building representations and
interpreting information)
• Up-to-date systems do not focus on retrieving
experiences from episodic memory

4. A Design for Supporting Memory
Retrieval and Sensemaking
• The main support mechanisms in the episodic
and semantic memory systems need to be
considered
• Contextual cues (time, place, tags) need to be
represented in the interface to access past
episodes from episodic memory
• Categorization and enrichment happen in
semantic memory in which the episodes are
connected

5. Timeline for Episodic and Sorting for
Semantic Memory

6. Map for Episodic and Layered Model
for Semantic Memory

7. Tag Cloud for Episodic and Concept
Map for Semantic Memory

8. Participatory Co-design Using a Paper
Prototype
• The paper prototype has been used in a series
of co-design meetings over several months in
order to generate and validate initial ideas
• The series have been held with clinical staff
from two medical practices: 2 GPs and 2
Diabetic Specialist Nurses (DSN) and 2 Health
Care Assistants (HCA)

9. Functionality that was considered to
be particularly useful
• The timeline view
• The collections
visualization
• The tag cloud view
• The links view.
• Participants saw the
tool as offering support
at both an individual
and organizational level

10. Possible Risks Found
• Participants would not
do anything else with
the material. For this
reason they suggested
that one should be
prompted to identify
actions/tasks for
themselves (and
colleagues) related to
the material/bits they
are working with

11. Conclusion
• The general architecture of the interface is
perceived to be effective
• Healthcare professionals prefer time and topic
cues rather than location cues
• The suggestion for reminders also suggests
that memory processes offer a suitable
conceptualization for their informal learning
needs

12. Future Work
• To investigate the important collaborative aspects
which have come out from the initial feedback:
– providing agreed categories and structures
– visualizing tags others have used
– sharing material and sensemaking tasks with
colleagues
• We will particularly focus on how this collective
knowledge influences individual sensemaking