International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making

In this paper, we propose a new approach to support information-sharing and activation of human networks in an organization. In this approach, someone who wants to know about something displays "what I want to know" on a large screen in a public space to let other people see it. This allows other people near the display to find out what he/she is interested in. If a person who knows about that sees the display by chance, they can talk about it on the spot in a face-to-face manner. Thus, smooth information-sharing can be achieved through spontaneous informal communications, and "know-who" knowledge is gradually accumulated. Based on experiments using a prototype system, we confirmed that this approach is effective for information-sharing and activating human networks.

We have developed a wearable device that records the activities of human–human and human–artifact interactions. Using microphones and cameras, the device imitates human perception, recording personal and social everyday-life experiences in multiple modalities, such as voice and visible scenes. These sensors record the perceived experiences continuously, and detect and index interactions from nonverbal behavior. The indexed stored experiences can serve as the first step toward a multimodal knowledge base created from daily life. An infrared LED ID tag system detects interactions, in terms of the ID and the relative positions of objects within the camera's visual field. In this study, we propose an "interaction scope" which is defined as the range of relative human–object positions that have a high probability of occurring in conversational interactions. Analysis of experimental conversational sessions confirms that this interaction scope exists and can represent these interactions naturally. We also demonstrate that our tag system effectively detects and measures the proposed interaction scope.

Comic strips can be used as a style of visualization on a human–computer interface because they can represent a wide variety of affairs with contexts or time series. This paper describes two systems for sharing personal context as comic strips: ComicDiary and Comic-FOAF-Viewer. Both the systems depict personal experiences or profiles including personal relationships in their comic strips and hyperlinks among related comics based on other characters in the story. ComicDiary allegorizes individual episodes that happen during touring exhibitions by creating a comic from a user's touring records accumulated from personal guidance systems and environmental facts, e.g., social events. For example, a ComicDiary might show a user's personal diary during a Japanese academic conference. The comic describes where the conference was held, the most interesting presentations, what happened, and so on. Exhibitions are places visited by people of all generations. Comic representation of a personal diary with amiable expressions fits such places. The comic strip is automatically generated, composed of 12 frames, and shown as a diary. Users can view their diaries at information kiosks located at exhibition sites. Friend of a Friend (FOAF), which is an XML/RDF application for expressing personal information and relationships, has attracted attention from Web developers because its files can describe human-centered networks such as Social Network Service (SNS). Current FOAF visualization tools utilize graphs or tables; however, it is difficult to represent a variety of relations. Comic-FOAF-Viewer aims to represent the multifarious relations and personal information that FOAF has to offer for surfing interfaces in FOAF networks.

There are many creative thinking manual methods in the world. They are brainstorming method, brain-writing method, mind mapping, NM method, Equivalent Transformation method, KJ method, etc. Human thinking process for creative problem solving consists of four sub-processes. They are divergent thinking sub-process, convergent thinking sub-process, idea crystallization sub-process, and idea verification sub-process. In accordance with this proposal, most Japanese research and development is centered on this four types of creative thinking manual methods and support systems. In this paper, we describe three types of Group Decision Support Systems (DSSs) for creative problem solving, similar to KJ method. All design philosophy depends on bottom-up decision-making. They are knowledge acquisition support groupware GRAPE, consensus-making support systems Group Coordinator (I) and Group Coordinator (II). The characteristic function of GRAPE is knowledge merging for GRAPE users, and that of Group-Coordinator (I) and Group-Coordinator (II) is tradeoff resolution by sensitivity analysis and adjusting of user requirements by the QDA method, respectively. The systems that we have developed are similar to the KJ method, which is the most popular methodology for creative problem solving in Japan. The essence of our developed methodology and tools is that it boosts intellectual productivity. GRAPE and its successors can speed-up the given group decision making problem by two to three times with respect to the idea crystallization (evaluation and judgment) sub-process.

We have developed a creativity collaboration support system, called GUNGEN, which supports the KJ method. The KJ method is one of the popular idea generation methods in Japan, like brainstorming. This method consists of four steps: entering ideas, grouping ideas, structuring groups, and writing composition. We have used about one hundred idea labels in the experiments. Several hundred labels are optimal to improve the results of the KJ method. However, long time is necessary to group more labels. Therefore, we have developed GUNGEN DX II for several hundred labels. GUNGEN DX II has a special function to group labels easily and efficiently. The feature for grouping labels is to restrict time and to operate easily. The function generates islands from the common parts of each user's groups automatically by majority decision. We have carried out the KJ method and compared it with the previous system. Even if the number of labels increased, the time required to group labels decreased by about 30%.

Decision support system (DSS) aims to provide effective support to solve unstructured, ill-structured or wicked problems as its initial claim in the late 1960s. Great as those technology achievements, "people problems" are key reasons of unimplemented goals of DSS, and sometimes increase uncertainties to decision making process. Meta-synthesis system approach (MSA) is oriented to complexities in those problems. In this paper, we adopt a paradigm of decision making in a DSS context, which emphasizes the synthesis of perspectives towards problems description and analysis, to explain the meta-synthetic support to unstructured problem solving. After very brief introduction of basic ideas of MSA and its testbed, Hall of Workshop on Meta-Synthetic Engineering (HWMSE), which is regarded as a knowledge creating ba, we address computerized supports to expose problem structure by collaborative activities for qualitative meta-synthesis. A practical tool and its visualization of humans' ideas are introduced.

The demand for knowledge management is increasing because knowledge is an important and essential resource for sustaining competitiveness. We report a system to support knowledge asset reuse. Incorporating work breakdown structure-based project management, workflow management, and a document database, the system guides workers to efficiently store and reuse knowledge assets. To dynamically circulate knowledge throughout an organization, the system supports the concept of knowledge flow, through which knowledge is transferred from one project to another. A distinctive feature of our approach is that after collecting relevant knowledge, the system sends it to the members of a project and prompts them to have a meeting to discuss whether they accept the knowledge. The purpose of this meeting is to have members internalize knowledge assets and share their tacit knowledge through discussion. We developed a prototype system and evaluated it using our experience with it.

Creation has been regarded as the most valuable advantage of corporations since the 1990s. However, team creation generally lacks effective support methods and support tools at present. It is important to research how to support team creation. In this paper, we design a system to support team creation, the main functions of which are team information record, knowledge visualization, and information relationship recognition.

This paper proposes a work guide (or framework) for analyzing organizational knowledge creation processes of small research projects, integrating basic concepts (or primitives) from several existing knowledge-creation theories. This guide has been developed during the evaluation of projects. We present results of the process analysis of research projects that have been completed recently. We indicate evidence of the concepts through our own experience and remark on differences among processes of different projects.

Meta-synthesis system approach (MSA) is proposed to tackle with open complex giant systems (OCGS) problems by Chinese system scientists since the late 1980s. Its essential idea can be simplified as from confident qualitative hypothesis to vigorous quantitative validation. To apply this approach, the synthesis of human expert opinions and emergent knowing, machines' powerful computing capacity and the available knowledge and cases are specifically emphasized from the perspective of systems engineering practice. Then the MSA practice may bring new understandings, knowledge and even paradigms about messy and unknown issues, which are under exploration in knowledge science research. In this paper, MSA to knowledge science is addressed. After brief introduction of meta-synthesis approach, a working flow of MSA during problem solving process is addressed and leads to meta-synthetic view toward knowledge science, especially on knowledge creation. Next comes brief introduction to a test for demonstrating the MSA to a macroeconomic problem, which shows a new paradigm to macroeconomic problem solving, a kind of knowledge creation which is different from general macroeconomic problem solving.