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ABSTRACT

Answer Garden allows organizations to develop databases of commonly asked questions that grow “organically” as new questions arise and are answered. It is designed to help in situations (such as field service organizations and customer “hot lines”) where there is a continuing stream of questions, many of which occur over and over, but some of which the organization has never seen before. The system includes a branching network of diagnostic questions that helps users find the answers they want. If the answer is not present, the system automatically sends the question to the appropriate expert, and the answer is returned to the user as well as inserted into the branching network. Experts can also modify this network in response to users' problems. Our initial Answer Garden database contains questions and answers about how to use the X Window System.

REFERENCES

• 1: Robert Akscyn , Donald McCracken , Elise Yoder, KMS: a distributed hypermedia system for managing knowledge in organizations, Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext, p.1-20, November 1987, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States [doi>10.1145/317426.317428]
• 2: Jeff Conklin, Hypertext: an introduction and survey, Computer, v.20 n.9, p.17-41, Sept. 1987 [doi>10.1109/MC.1987.1663693]
• 3: Coppeto, Thomas J.; Anderson, Beth L.; Geer, Daniel E., Jr.; and G. Winfield Treese. "OLC: An On-Line Consulting System for UNIX." Proceedings of the Usenix Summer 1989 Conference, 1989, pp. 83-94.
• 4: Dyson, Esther. "Computers, Customers and Hand-Holding." Forbes, August 7, 1989, p. 128.
• 5: Jonathan Grudin, Why CSCW applications fail: problems in the design and evaluation of organization of organizational interfaces, Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.85-93, September 26-28, 1988, Portland, Oregon, United States [doi>10.1145/62266.62273]
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• 7: Levitt, Barbara, and James G. March. "Organizational Learning." Annual Review of Sociology, 1988, pp. 319-40.
• 8: McCormack, Joel; Asente, Paul; and Ralph R. Swick. X Toolkit lntrinsics - C Language Interface. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1989.
• 9: Julian E. Orr, Narratives at work: story telling as cooperative diagnostic activity, Proceedings of the 1986 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, December 03-05, 1986, Austin, Texas [doi>10.1145/637069.637077]
• 10: Swick, Ralph R., and Mark S. Ackerman. "The X Toolkit: More Bricks for Building User Interfaces, or Widgets for Hire." Proceedings of the Usenix Winter 1988 Conference, 1988, pp. 221-228.
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Information networks

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.2 Types of Systems
          Subjects: Decision support (e.g., MIS)

General Terms:
Design