I am currently working on a project on ontology-based dialog management.
The project is funded by the NIH. The goal is to develop a tool that acts
like a counselor to help individuals improve their health in specific
ways, such as getting more exercise or stopping smoking. Eventually,
similar techniques could be applied to group sessions. (01)
This research involves dialog management and ontologies. It is also
solving a very hard problem and will eventually involve group
collaboration to solve the problem. However, it isn't clear that it is
solving a "wicked" problem. On the other hand, my research already
addresses social and psychological issues that do not seem to be addressed
as much in the work on wicked problems. (02)
This leads to the following question for this group: Does it make sense
for my work to be included in a panel on dialog mapping as part of the
OKMDS mini-series? (03)
-- Ken (04)
On Sat, 1 Dec 2007, Peter Yim wrote: (05)
> Thought this discussion thread (below)would be of interest.
>
> Ref.
>http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OKMDS/OrganizingCommitteeMeeting_2007_11_27#nid164B
> ... the dialog mapping approach toward addressing wicked problems is
> what Jack Park and I are working on, bringing in Jeff Conklin, Simon
> Buckingham-Shum et al. as one of the upcoming features in the OKMDS
> mini-series.
>
> Regards. =ppy
> --
>
>
> On Dec 1, 2007 7:30 AM PST, Eric Armstrong <Eric.Armstrong@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Peter P. Jones wrote 30 Nov 2007 20:05:03 +0000:
>>>
>>> http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/wickedproblems.html
>>> <quote>
>>> "In this day and age of email and the internet, our expectations were
>>> that computer-mediated group brainstorming, i.e. across the web with no
>>> face-to face contact, was going to have the best results," Davidson
>>> says. "What we found, however, was that people working as individuals
>>> were at least as effective and possibly more so than those brainstorming
>>> in a group over the web when trying to solve 'wicked,' tangled problems,
>>> both in terms of quality and quantity."
>>> </quote>
>
>> At the end:
>> --------------------
>> "Despite our findings, it still seems reasonable that there may be modes
>> of [as yet, untested] web-based interactions and strategies that would
>> allow the larger group to have superior performance...
>>
>> He expects that in coming years "better software, including threaded
>> discussions with moderators to focus the work and prediction markets to
>> evaluate quality, will become tools that large organizations will use to
>> solve wicked problems."
>> --------------------
>>
>> I'm glad he said that. Because the press release summary made
>> no mention of Jeff Conklin's paradigms for taming such problems,
>> despite using the term he and/or Horst Ritter popularized.
>>
>> The question is not, DO groups perform better with current tools.
>> The question is, COULD they perform better with decent tools.
>>
>> It's been going on two decades since Jeff found that:
>>
>> a) Online discussion of such problems doesn't work at all
>> b) In person discussions only work with an experienced and
>> highly trained moderator
>>
>> In a creative head, ideas bounce up and are shot down for one
>> reason or another. The partial solutions mix and mingle with
>> the growing list of potential objections that are elicited by
>> the exploration of the solution space. Eventually, there is an
>> "aha" moment, when a solution occurs that satisfies all known
>> objections. I believe that Jeff's dialogue mapping methodology
>> is a pretty decent attempt to map that process of problem
>> investigation, multi-dimensional understanding, and solution
>> exploration, in a way that both records the process while
>> also making the solution clear.
>>
>> I continue to believe that we can make such a system work
>> online, if we follow Doug Engelbart's dictum of making the
>> users smarter, as well. (It's like structured authoring.
>> You have to learn the structure restrictions to work with
>> them effectively. It takes a month or two before you stop
>> feeling restricted, but eventually you get there.)
>>
>> --
>> This message is archived at:
>>
>>
>http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=47517E1B.8010303@xxxxxxx
>>
>>
>
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