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Tech Report kmi-93-02 Abstract


The Emerging VITAL Workbench
Techreport ID: kmi-93-02
Date: 1993
Author(s): John Domingue, Enrico Motta and Stuart Watt
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VITAL is a research and development project which aims to provide methodological and software support for developing large, embedded KBS applications. VITAL is novel in that its ambition is to develop a methodology-based workbench covering the whole KBS life-cycle, from requirements specification to implementation, and to integrate and deploy a number of techniques drawn from artificial intelligence, as well as software engineering and human-computer interaction fields of research. In this paper we report on the current state of the VITAL workbench, and in particular we discuss the general design choices we took concerning the overall infrastructure, user interface, data and control integration, and tool management. Moreover, we'll describe in some detail the important role that some advanced software technologies - such as groupware and software visualization - have played in the design and implementation of the workbench.

Publication(s):

This paper appeared in Aussenac, N., Boy, G., Gaines, B., Linster, M., Ganascia, J.-G. & Kodratoff, Y. (eds) Knowledge Acquisition for Knowledge-Based Systems 7th European Workshop, EKAW'93 Toulouse and Caylus, France, September, 1993, pp. 320-339, Springer-Verlag.
 
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Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.