Information Curators in an

Enterprise File-Sharing Service

Michael Muller, David R Millen, & Jonathan Feinberg

IBM Research & IBM Center for Social Software

Cambridge MA USA

1

Agenda

• Cattail, an enterprise file-sharing service

– Tools for sharing files

• Quantitative analysis: Collections are interesting!

• Qualitative analysis: What do Collectors do?

– Information Curators

• Related work � Implications for design• Related work � Implications for design

2

Cattail for Enterprise File-Sharing

• Upload a file

• Download a file

• Share a file with

other user(s)

– Provide access

– NotifyB

A

B

C

EG

A

B

B

C D

F

• Collect a file into a

named Collection

• Annotate a file

• Search for files

• View other users’ histories

• Track a file’s usage

3

H

B

D

F

P

Q

E

G

B

H

Cattail for Enterprise File-Sharing

• Upload a file

• Download a file

• Share a file with

other user(s)

– Provide access

– NotifyB

A

B

C

EG

A

B

B

C D

F

5444 users (6.2%) created

12461 collections comprising• Collect a file into a

named Collection

• Annotate a file

• Search for files

• View other users’ histories

• Track a file’s usage

4

H

B

D

F

P

Q

E

G

B

H

12461 collections comprising

60476 files (50% of files)

What Do Collectors Do?

• Whom to ask

– 100 most-frequent Collectors

• 22 countries (27%)

– Select 22 informants

• 16 countries (20%)

• Gender balance (36% women, 64% men)

Diverse job titles (sales, consulting, operations, architecture, • Diverse job titles (sales, consulting, operations, architecture,

management, communications, design)

• How to ask

– 1-hour interview via instant messaging

– Topics

• motivation, goals, presentation, use of others’ collections

– 5 coding iterations

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Individual and Shared Work

• “easier for myself and others to find the content

again… a more active way of sharing” (Informant 11,

internal communications, Austria)

• “a knowledge package…. to summarize … mixed

knowledges [with others]” (I8, consultant, Turkey)

• “group them in a neat bundle to shove it at people”• “group them in a neat bundle to shove it at people”

(I9, project management, UK)

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Semi-Structured Work Practices

• “1. organizing files… 2. finding files I use most often

(either my own or those of the people i [work with]… 3.

sharing files…” (I22, sales, USA)

• “…a master report, and an updated report for every

member of my department…. 31 [downloaders]... 20

[uploaders] …. I open a new collection every week…”[uploaders] …. I open a new collection every week…”

(I2, supply chain specialist, Mexico)

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Curators & their Audiences

• “regular collections with manually selected / curated

resources…. trying to help people (and myself!) make

sense of the files that are available” (I15, enterprise

2.0 evangelist, Canada)

• “a kind of editor, you share you own and other useful

info via collections” (I18, sales, Finland)info via collections” (I18, sales, Finland)

• “put some structure around the content I

collect/create around my topic… what is good for me

is good for my readers ☺” (I19, product manager, France)

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Framing Collections for Others’ Usage

• “very short descriptions… the intent of the collection –

so I can keep the collection name really short!” (I9,

project management, UK)

• “sometimes I used the [descriptive field] to link to

other related content [cross] reference” (I19, product

manager, France)manager, France)

• “i asked everyone to use the naming convention, and I

enforced it” (I22, sales, USA).

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Current and Future Shared Usage

• Formal requirements

– “audit [can] go in on a monthly basis so that they can test to

see if the necessary billing approvals exist.” (I4, business operations, UK)

• Customer relationship management

– “an asset for the future opportunities about the client” (I8, – “an asset for the future opportunities about the client” (I8, consultant, Turkey)

• Leaving a record for others

– “It’s a fail safe if I was knocked down by a bus!” (I4, business operations, UK)

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Summary and Comparisons

• Quantitative analyses

– Collections and Collecting are major aspects of Cattail use

• Qualitative analyses

– Use of Collections by Information Curators to

• Find and refind content for self or others

• Support formal and informal work practices – current and future• Support formal and informal work practices – current and future

• Prepare and comunicate knowledge packages for self and others

• Other forms of curating

– Blogging as “digital curating” (Rubel, 2009)

• Cattail users often have targeted or known audiences

– Tagging as a kind of curating (Thom-Santelli et al., 2008)

• Tag provides informal link to “collection” of URLs

– Bietz & Lee (ECSCW 2009): collecting genomic sequences11

Related Work

Organizational file-sharing

• Architectures

– Peer-to-peer

– Centralized

• Organizational services

– UD Dropbox (Schwartz, 2007) - Centralized– UD Dropbox (Schwartz, 2007) - Centralized

– Apocrita (Reynolds et al., 2005) – Peer-to-peer

– We are hoping to see research reports from these

projects!

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Implications for Design

� Person-centered views

� Sharing-histories (Voida et al., 2006; Whalen et al., 2008)

� Notifications of sharing (Voida et al., 2006)

� Artifact-centered view (Whalen et al., 2008)

� Developing the collection

– No way to track views on a collection � collection-centered view

– Comments and discussions on the collection as-a-whole– Comments and discussions on the collection as-a-whole

� Developing the audience (Thom-Santelli et al., 2008)

– Group-centered view (Bellotti, 1996; Voida et al., 2006)

– How did people find the collection?

– How else can we help the users of collections?

� Design to facilitate users as (co-)inventors of new work

practices, features, and technologies (Muller et al., 2005)

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Thank you!

Slides may be found on slideshare.net

michael_muller@us.ibm.com

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File-Sharing – a site for Appropriation

• Re-invention or appropriation

– While adopting a new technology, uses also adapt it

(Muller et al., 2005)

– Users transform a technology through use

– Lead-users (Franke et al., 2006)

– Users as post-implementation designers (Kujala & – Users as post-implementation designers (Kujala &

Kauppinen, 2004)

• Enterprise perspective

– Understand users’ work practices in depth

– “Harvest” user innovations into new features

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Cattail Statistics

• Users by actions

– All users 88270

– Uploaders 15934

– Downloaders 85707

– Sharers 12584

– Collectors 5444– Collectors 5444

– Annotators 3884

• Collective goods

– Files 120288

– Collections 12461

– Annotations 8828

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Collection Statistics

• Users by actions

– All users 88270

– Uploaders 15934

– Downloaders 85707

– Sharers 12584

– Collectors 5444

• Collections

– Collectors 5444

(6.2%)

– Collections 12461

– Collected files 60476

(50%)– Collectors 5444

– Annotators 3884

• Collective goods

– Files 120288

– Collections 12461

– Annotations 8828

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