Find an Expert: Designing Expert Selection Interfaces for Formal Help-Giving
Workplace Social Performance
/
Paul, Sharoda A.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.3038-3048
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: A critical aspect of formal help-giving tasks in the enterprise is finding
the right expert. We built and evaluated a tool, Find an Expert, to examine
what the most important expert selection criteria are for help-seekers and how
to represent them in expert selection interfaces for formal help-giving tasks.
We observed users' expert selection decisions and found that the diversity of
topic expertise and the amount of related experience were significantly
important in helping users decide which expert to contact. Through
self-reported data from users, we found that in addition to expertise and
experience, expert accessibility indicators, like online availability and
language proficiency, were considered important criteria for selecting experts.
Finally, publicly-displayed crowdsourced ratings of experts, while deemed
useful indicators of expert quality by help-seekers, raised concerns for
experts. We conclude with suggestions regarding the design of expert selection
interfaces for formal help-giving tasks.