Sensemaking: Conceptual Changes, Cognitive Mechanisms, and Structural Representations
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ABSTRACT Title of Document: SENSEMAKING: CONCEPTUAL CHANGES, COGNITIVE MECHANISMS, AND STRUCTURAL REPRESENTATIONS. A QUALITATIVE USER STUDY. Pengyi Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Professor Dagobert Soergel College of Information Studies The purpose of this thesis is to improve our understanding of sensemaking process as a basis for building better systems to assist sensemaking. Sensemaking is the task of creating an understanding of a problem or task so that further actions may be taken in an informed manner. Sensemaking is a pre-requisite for many other tasks such as decision making and problem solving. An important part of sensemaking involves making clear the interrelated concepts and their relationships in a problem or task space. This research investigated the question of how users create and use structured representations for sensemaking. It proposed and refined an iterative sensemaking model building upon previous sensemaking research, learning theories, cognitive psychology and task-based information seeking and use. In particular, the study focused on the processes, conceptual changes, and cognitive mechanisms used during users‘ sensemaking tasks. The qualitative, multi-case user study investigated how a sample of fifteen users working with news writing and business analysis tasks structure their conceptual space with the assistance of note-taking and concept mapping tools. Data on the sensemaking process were collected from multiple sources including think-aloud protocols, screen movement recordings, interviews, and intermediate and final work products. Using the iterative sensemaking model as an analytical and descriptive framework, the study captured the often idiosyncratic paths sensemakers took, ranging from planned, systematic to rather random, ad hoc patterns of ―search-- sensemaking‖ iterations. Findings also revealed various ways in which the iterations started and exited, which suggested that the heterogeneous patterns of sensemaking lie in the shifts from one iteration to the next, rather than in the iterations themselves. The knowledge structure was updated by accretion, tuning, and restructuring to produce the final knowledge representation and sensemaking product. Several cognitive mechanisms were used in processing new information, examining concepts and relationships, and examining anomalies and inconsistencies. They were used in bottom-up, top-down, and combined fashions to move the processes along and to trigger conceptual changes to the knowledge structure of users. Based on these findings, the study argues that information system that aimed to assist sensemaking should provide an architecture that links structure, data, and sources that can be represented and manipulated in multiple formats. It should also provide integrated assistances at the task and cognitive mechanism levels. The research contributes to sensemaking research by extending existing descriptive sensemaking models with an analytical framework that incorporates conceptual changes to the knowledge structure and cognitive mechanisms that trigger the processes and conceptual changes. Furthermore, the research identified core issues in designing information systems to assist sensemaking tasks and suggested design implications for sensemaking tools that may be useful in many settings such as learning, knowledge creation, organization, and sharing. SENSEMAKING: CONCEPTUAL CHANGES, COGNITIVE MECHANISMS, AND STRUCTURAL REPRESENTATIONS. A QUALITATIVE USER STUDY By Pengyi Zhang Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 Advisory Committee: Professor Dagobert Soergel, Chair Associate Professor Linda Aldoory, Dean‘s Representative Associate Professor John Newhagen Associate Professor Douglas W. Oard Assistant Professor Yan Qu © Copyright by Pengyi Zhang 2010 Dedication To my parents. ii Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to my advisor and chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Dagobert Soergel, who coached me through the PhD program and helped me in every possible way. I could not thank him enough for his dedication, support, and confidence in me. I also wish to thank members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Linda Aldoory, Dr. John Newhagen, Dr. Doug Oard, and Dr. Yan Qu, for their valuable suggestions and feedback throughout this research. During my study at Maryland, I was fortunate to have worked with several faculty members. I thank them, especially Dr. Jimmy Lin, Dr. Doug Oard, Dr. Judith Klavans, and Dr. Yan Qu, for giving the opportunity to work on their projects. This dissertation was partially supported by the Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. I wish to express my appreciation to Beta Phi Mu and Dr. Garfield for this generous award. I am thankful to the students who took their time participating in this research and sharing their experience and insights with me. I was lucky to have several wonderful friends at Maryland whom I received much help from and shared a lot of fun with. I wish to thank Xiaohan Hu, Xiaoxue He, Wei Jin, Lin Yuan, and Lynne Plettenberg for sharing this journey with me. My greatest appreciation goes to my husband, Hongzhong Zhou. Without his unconditional love, continuous support, and tremendous help, I could have not made this accomplishment. Our lovely daughter, Momo, came along while I was working on this research and has brought so much joy ever since. Words cannot express how much I love you. iii Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .............................................................................................................. ix List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................ x Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Problem Statement .............................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 What is Sensemaking? ................................................................................. 1 1.1.2 Implications.................................................................................................. 5 1.2 Research Question .............................................................................................. 6 1.3 Contributions....................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Framework .......................................... 9 2.1 Sensemaking Models ........................................................................................ 11 2.1.1 Russell‘s Model ......................................................................................... 13 2.1.2 The Cyclical Model of Intelligence Process .............................................. 15 2.1.3 Pirolli & Card‘s Model of Intelligence Analysis ....................................... 16 2.1.4 Conducting Research as Sensemaking....................................................... 19 2.1.5 Organizational Sensemaking ..................................................................... 20 2.1.6 Comparison and Analysis of the Models ................................................... 21 2.2 Task-based Information Seeking ...................................................................... 25 2.3 Cognitive Processes and Knowledge Structures ............................................... 27 2.3.1 Types of Cognitive/Conceptual Change .................................................... 27 2.3.2 Cognitive Mechanisms............................................................................... 30 2.3.3 Relationship to Previous Knowledge ......................................................... 34 2.3.4 Internal vs. External Representations of Knowledge ................................. 35 2.3.5 Learning Theories as Theories for Sensemaking ....................................... 40 2.4 Design of Related Tools.................................................................................... 45 2.4.1 Information Extraction ............................................................................... 46 2.4.2 Representation and Visualization Tools .................................................... 50 2.4.3 Analytical Tools ......................................................................................... 59 2.4.4 Task-specific vs. Task-independent Tools ................................................. 62 2.5 A Comprehensive Iterative Sensemaking Model ............................................. 63 Chapter 3: Methodology ............................................................................................. 70 3.1 Research Design................................................................................................ 70 3.2 Participants and Tasks......................................................................................