0 principals for many valuable business purposes, but it's very important that "Borders seem appropriate to users.
I agree and suggest adding a follow-on principal: "Borders should seem transparent to those with permission to cross them."
For Traction TeamPage this means:
- All content and relevant context are indexed for search, but the search engine delivers the subset of results that the person making the request can read.
- Tag clouds and drill-down navigation present the tags and drill-down paths derived from what that person can read.
- Traction's Dashboard views roll-up content from many spaces based on tag, content or other criteria defined by Section widgets, and automatically shows the subset of content which that person can read.
- RSS feeds, email, IM notifications and cross-reference lists automatically reflect the content and cross references which that person can read.
For example, if you're an employee at the center of a "hub and spoke" collaboration pattern, when you navigate, search or link information, the borders separating different customer spaces and internal spaces you can read become transparent for collaboration.
You can still use the names of spaces created for particular customers to focus your attention on a particular issue or collection of content, but you effectively see one big wiki / weblog. Borders help you visualize the business context and intended audience.
If a customer logs in to your TeamPage server, they see only the rolled-up content, search results, tags, feeds, and space names that they have permission to read. The content - and existence - of private collaboration spaces of other customers or reserved for internal use are hidden.
Traction TeamPage even extends commenting and inline discussion to work transparently across borders.
Just like a good architect knows how the to use the affordances and relationships of physical spaces to help cue behavior, architects of social software should aim to use software affordances to make socializing in the neighborhood, workplace, and commons as natural as possible. I think this will require cues to signal and differentiate as well as connect places. The goal should be to help people read context and act comfortably in different places whose norms they can quickly learn, understand and trust. As Harrison and Dourish write:
"A conference hall and a theatre share many similar spatial features (such as lighting and orientation); and yet we rarely sing or dance when presenting conference papers, and to do so would be regarded as at least slightly odd (or would need to be explained). We wouldn't describe this behaviour as 'out of space'; but it would most certainly be 'out of place' and this feeling is so strong that we might try quite hard to interpret a song or a dance as part of a presentation, if faced with it suddenly. It is a sense of place, not space, which makes it appropriate to dance at a Grateful Dead concert, but not at a Cambridge college high table; to be naked in the bedroom, but not in the street; and to sit at our windows, peering out, rather than at other people's windows, peering in. Place, not space, frames appropriate behaviour." - Re-Place-ing Space: The Roles of Place and Space in Collaborative Systems
Information Foraging at FASTForward '07 Blog and wiki spaces become what Information Foraging researchers like Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card call enriched "information patches". These patches (and the resources they link to) are likely to become rich sources of highly contextualized information because they represent the work product of people engaged in a business process that provides a natural context for guided search.
I showed a few slides introducing Information Foraging theory, then a few screenshot examples using FAST's guided search to navigate Traction content by space (project), label, and automatically recognized keyword or entity (person name, company name, location).
You have a much better chance finding a contextually relevant "Smithers contract" in a client project blog/wiki space where you can easily explore content hits with an "Urgent" label and a pileup of recent comments on your own. Or at least find a space where you can post your own question and expect a highly relevant response.
To download my slides click Search Meets Blogs and Wikis (4.7MB .ppt)
Greg Lloyd, FASTForward '07, Feb 8, 2007 San Diego.
See the book: Information Foraging Theory, Peter Pirolli, Oxford Books Jan 2007.
Greg Lloyd on "Enterprise 2.0 for Intelligence Analysts", FASTForward 08 It’s easy to store and find documents in folders if you know the structure by heart. FAST even makes it easy to search the content of your files, Web pages, and messages and navigate by content. What’s difficult to capture, search, and navigate is the context that makes content relevant for collaboration in a link-poor environment that exists in the typical enterprise. Enterprise 2.0 technology – specifically blogs, wikis, and social tagging – provide immediate value for collaborative work by creating an evolving record that connects external intelligence, internal dialog, and work product. This record can make enterprise search work and scale like the Web. Part 1 (Greg Lloyd, Traction Software) of this session examines how intelligence analysts in business and government are using Enterprise 2.0 tools to help manage this deep, broad, and challenging form of collaboration. Click here for a copy of the slides 7MB .ppt
Traction Software Brings FAST-Enabled Search to Blogs and Wikis Traction Software Brings FAST-Enabled Search to Blogs and Wikis Traction Goes Beyond Blogs and Wikis, Offering Integrated FAST InStream Search Technology to Enable Secure Search, Entity Extraction and Drill Down Navigation PROVIDENCE, RI -- (MARKET WIRE) -- December 18, 2006 -- Traction® Software, the leading developer of products for secure, scalable, web-based collaboration, today announced the general availability of its Traction TeamPage™ FAST Search Module. The Module is an integrated and easily installed option, based on Fast Search & Transfer's FAST InStream™ OEM search technology solution. The Module is priced at USD $15K per Traction TeamPage Server.
Traction Software Selects Attivio to Power Information Access for Enterprise 2.0 Social Software NEWTON, MASS. – October 14, 2009 -- Attivio Active Intelligence Engine’s Permissioning Model and Real-Time Updates Prove Key Differentiators in Replacing Leading Search Solution at Traction Attivio, Inc. today announced that Traction Software, the leading developer of Enterprise 2.0 social software, has chosen the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine ™ (AIE) to replace its legacy enterprise search solution for easier indexing, retrieval of content and an enhanced user experience. As part of the selection process, Traction evaluated several market-leading solutions before choosing Attivio’s unified information access engine for its single, flexible API, full Java support as well as its sophisticated and secure permissioning model.
Follow TractionTeam on Twitter for news.
