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Knowledge Application 205

Box 6.3
An example: A knowledge service center uses task modeling and user modeling

An R & D organization relies upon a dedicated team of ten information professionals
who are continually updating their user and task models in order to optimize knowledge
services. For example, each researcher ’ s profi le is updated regularly to refl ect changing
interests, new skills, and/or new projects. In addition, each information request is also
analyzed periodically to assess the level of noise versus the level of hits — that is, how
often was the information judged to be useful? This analysis is used to further refi ne
or fi ne-tune the profi les so that the next information request will yield increasingly better
results.

Malcolm (1998) discussed the extension of the EPSS concept to apply to groups
(CoPs) and to house content that could be dynamically updated within an organiza-
tion ’ s knowledge repository. Performance support systems today have been designed
primarily for individual use: they support an individual as he or she works to accom-
plish some performance goal. On the commercial market, programs that help you
prepare your income tax returns, write a will, or create a newsletter template all
illustrate this level of support. In corporations, systems that support customer service
representatives — whether in a call center for fi nancial transactions or travel reserva-
tions, or face-to-face in the lobby of a hotel — also represent an individual ’ s use of
an EPSS. Imagine a group around a table with the means to project a computer
display. The group would work through the steps of the process together, brainstorm-
ing, and receiving group-processing advice from a built-in “ coach. ” The work product
belonged to the group and it was the group ’ s performance that had been enhanced
by the EPSS.
Another way to look at this challenge is to say that yet another conceptual merger
needs to take place — this time assimilating the discipline of KM, that is, capturing and
sharing vital business information from a variety of sources, not just top-down, in
order to enable better decision making in a dynamic business environment. We in the
fi eld of performance support have much to learn from it, just as those who study
knowledge capture and sharing have much to learn from us about how to integrate
various kinds of support into the context of performing work.
Examples are fairly common in the large consulting fi rms where dynamically
updated EPSSs are integrated within the organizational knowledge repository in order
to make the complex task of sharing critical business and personal development infor-
mation much easier.