Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Max Erik Rohde and David Sundaram
6. Conclusion, limitations and future research
Knowledge management was inspired in its very roots by <strong>the</strong> novel possibilities <strong>of</strong>fered by information
technology (McDermott 1999). Yet, recent research recommends great caution in focussing on
technological mechanisms to ‘manage’ inherently social knowledge (Davenport 2011; Thompson &
Walsham 2004). A number <strong>of</strong> guidelines for designing information intensive knowledge-support
systems are proposed in this paper, which acknowledge and consider <strong>the</strong> tacit nature <strong>of</strong> knowledge
but none<strong>the</strong>less aspire to leverage <strong>the</strong> potentials an information-centric approach <strong>of</strong>fers.
One <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> key claims in <strong>the</strong>se guidelines is to understand information as a way to connect tacit
contexts o<strong>the</strong>rwise separated by time and space. As one possible implementation <strong>of</strong> a generic
mechanism to author, navigate and query such connections, a prototype based on a directed,
unlabeled graph <strong>of</strong> objects has been implemented. This prototype allows <strong>the</strong> fusion <strong>of</strong> local, personal
and global organizational information networks, <strong>the</strong> representation <strong>of</strong> information in various formats,
as well as <strong>the</strong> manipulation <strong>of</strong> networks using an intuitive drag and drop based user interface.
This research is primarily an illustration and an explorative implementation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> guidelines derived
from <strong>the</strong> literature. The process <strong>of</strong> design and implementation has been carefully documented using a
project blog, a source code management system and more than 150 illustrative test cases; critical
reflection upon this process against <strong>the</strong> claims and requirements set forth in <strong>the</strong> literature is constantly
undertaken. However, a formal evaluation to establish a claim <strong>of</strong> pre-eminence <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> propsoed
guidelines or prototype over related approaches has not been pursued.
Both <strong>the</strong> proposed guidelines and <strong>the</strong> implemented prototype <strong>of</strong>fer promising avenues for future
research. Alternative implementations for <strong>the</strong> proposed guidelines could be explored and compared
with <strong>the</strong> current iteration <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> prototype. In addition, <strong>the</strong> current iteration <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> prototype can be
adapted to and tested against <strong>the</strong> requirements <strong>of</strong> a specific domain, for instance knowledge
management in <strong>the</strong> legal pr<strong>of</strong>ession. Moreover, networks authored with <strong>the</strong> prototype can be
analysed qualitatively and quantitatively as every user interaction in <strong>the</strong> prototype is recorded and <strong>the</strong>
prototype has been extensively used by a number <strong>of</strong> testers.
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