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I need someone to help!: a taxonomy of helper-finding activities in the enterprise

Published: 23 February 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Finding the right person to ask for help is a difficult task within a large enterprise. While there are a few studies detailing practices for finding an expert often in the context of an expertise locator system, there are fewer studies on workplace practices and challenges for finding a person who can help, especially independent of any particular technology. We conducted a two-part study of helper-finding activities with 36 enterprise workers, representing different job roles and levels of experience. First, we present a taxonomy of workplace helper-finding needs that involves tasks, topics, and helper selection criteria, developed by analyzing two weeks of participant diaries describing helper-finding problems. Second, we present the results of follow-up interviews with each participant, focusing on helper-finding challenges in the workplace. Finally, we present design implications for systems aimed at supporting helper-finding in the workplace.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
    February 2013
    1594 pages
    ISBN:9781450313315
    DOI:10.1145/2441776
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 23 February 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. diary study
    2. expertise location
    3. office
    4. social networking

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    February 23 - 27, 2013
    Texas, San Antonio, USA

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    • (2024)Driving Innovation Ecosystem Transformation via Digital Platforms and Knowledge Co-CreationAI and Data Analytics Applications in Organizational Management10.4018/979-8-3693-1058-8.ch005(80-107)Online publication date: 16-Feb-2024
    • (2024)Forming Shared Interest Pods: Barriers to Self-Assembly of Interest-Based Small Groups, and Dynamics of Retaining and Giving up Control to Find Collective FitProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869848:CSCW2(1-50)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
    • (2021)Tag a Teacher: A Qualitative Analysis of WhatsApp-Based Teacher Networks in Low-Income Indian SchoolsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445221(1-16)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
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    • (2016)Find an ExpertProceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2858036.2858131(3038-3048)Online publication date: 7-May-2016
    • (2016)Knowledge Flows Within Open Source Software Projects: A Social Network PerspectiveAdvances in Ubiquitous Networking 210.1007/978-981-10-1627-1_19(247-258)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2016
    • (2016)Who Can Help to Review This Piece of Code?Collaboration in a Hyperconnected World10.1007/978-3-319-45390-3_25(289-301)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2016
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