TY - JOUR
T1 - Collaboration and synergy in hybrid Q&A
T2 - Participatory design method and results
AU - Shah, Chirag
AU - Radford, Marie L.
AU - Connaway, Lynn Silipigni
N1 - Funding Information:
The work reported in this paper is supported by the IMLS National Leadership Grant Award # LG-06-11-0342-11 (Cyber Synergy: Seeking Sustainability through Collaboration between Virtual Reference and Social Q&A Sites 8 8 ). The authors are grateful to the expert participants in the three design sessions reported here, as well as to graduate students Erik Choi, Alyssa Darden, and Vanessa Kitzie for helping to conduct the sessions and code the transcripts.
Funding Information:
Marie L. Radford is a professor and director of the PhD program in communication, information and library studies at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information. Her research interests include interpersonal communication in reference services (traditional and virtual), qualitative methods, evaluation, and cultural studies. She is co-principal investigator of the “Seeking Synchronicity” (with Lynn Silipigni Connaway) and “Cyber Synergy” (with Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Chirag Shah) projects funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, Rutgers, and OCLC, Inc. She gives frequent keynote speeches and scholarly papers at national and international library and communication conferences and publishes widely in LIS journals. Her latest book is Leading the Reference Renaissance (Neal-Schuman, 2012). She received the 2010 American Library Association/Reference & User Services Association Mudge Award for distinguished contributions to reference service.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2015/4/1
Y1 - 2015/4/1
N2 - Virtual reference services (VRS) and social question and answer (SQA) are two different platforms that share many facets of their functionality, leading to an opportunity to create synergic solutions by bringing complimentary aspects of these services together. This article describes the use of participatory design, a method commonly used in human-computer interaction (HCI), for investigating design and deployment challenges to create a new hybrid question-answer (Q&A) system. A set of three design sessions was conducted with 17 experts from academia and industry. These semi-guided discussions asked the experts for their opinions and suggestions on various issues concerning what a potential hybrid Q&A system could look like. In addition, the participants were encouraged to provide design and implementation ideas based on expertise in their relative fields. The suggestions, comments, and ideas resulted in the development of 11 themes within three categories: (1) provision of more information; (2) provision of control; and (3) focus on user-friendly design. This paper provides details of the method, the sessions, and the design suggestions including the 11 themes and three broad categories. The paper provides a synthesis of the implications of the findings for virtual reference and social Q&A service providers and system designers. Finally, the participatory design method is compared to other methods, and implications for its use in library and information science are presented.
AB - Virtual reference services (VRS) and social question and answer (SQA) are two different platforms that share many facets of their functionality, leading to an opportunity to create synergic solutions by bringing complimentary aspects of these services together. This article describes the use of participatory design, a method commonly used in human-computer interaction (HCI), for investigating design and deployment challenges to create a new hybrid question-answer (Q&A) system. A set of three design sessions was conducted with 17 experts from academia and industry. These semi-guided discussions asked the experts for their opinions and suggestions on various issues concerning what a potential hybrid Q&A system could look like. In addition, the participants were encouraged to provide design and implementation ideas based on expertise in their relative fields. The suggestions, comments, and ideas resulted in the development of 11 themes within three categories: (1) provision of more information; (2) provision of control; and (3) focus on user-friendly design. This paper provides details of the method, the sessions, and the design suggestions including the 11 themes and three broad categories. The paper provides a synthesis of the implications of the findings for virtual reference and social Q&A service providers and system designers. Finally, the participatory design method is compared to other methods, and implications for its use in library and information science are presented.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.lisr.2015.02.008
DO - 10.1016/j.lisr.2015.02.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84930575078
SN - 0740-8188
VL - 37
SP - 92
EP - 99
JO - Library and Information Science Research
JF - Library and Information Science Research
IS - 2
ER -