Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication
Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication
A behavioral approach to information retrieval system design
Journal of Documentation
Considering an organization's memory
CSCW '98 Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Behind the help desk: evolution of a knowledge management system in a large organization
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Where am I and who am I?: issues in collaborative technical help
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
The practical indispensability of articulation work to immediate and remote help-giving
CSCW '06 Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work
CoScripter: automating & sharing how-to knowledge in the enterprise
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Modern software product support processes and the usage of multimedia formats
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Service technicians in the field often come across difficult service problems that are new to them. They have a large number of resources that they can draw on to deal with such problems, including both people and documents. We have undertaken a detailed study of technicians' everyday work, and have discovered two distinct types of information use, reflecting two different problem-solving practices. The less frequently used problem-solving practice is instruction following, where technicians follow company-documented Repair Analysis Procedures (RAPs). The second, more common practice is gleaning, where the information is gathered from many sources -- including other technicians and informal tips, which are documents written by technicians describing their invented solutions to hard service problems. Our observations show how the informational and interface affordances of the system for accessing the tips support their easy incorporation into the gleaning approach for problem solving in difficult cases. We also recommend ways that RAPs can be augmented to provide affordances for gleaning, and more effective instruction following.