User behavior patterns in the electronic information exchange system

Abstract

The Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) is a computerized conferencing system intended to allow both the facilitation of scientific and technical communications and experimentation and research into human information-communication cognitive processes. To meet the first objective EIES offers functional components of messaging, conferencing, notebooks and bulletins for its users. To meet the second objective EIES allows for the tailoring of interfaces by individuals and groups, and the incorporation of special processing and interconnect options to other computer and information systems. EIES is designed as a research tool or laboratory without walls in order to allow information scientists and those in related fields to observe, evaluate, experiment with and investigate the utilization of such systems by individuals and groups. During the test period EIES was utilized by about 200 individuals. Approximately 10,000 hours of usage occurred, 40,000 items of text were composed and over 123,000 items of text delivered. This comprised approximately 2 million lines of text communicated among the user population. The initial results demonstrate very different behavior patterns for individuals than exhibited by other types of interactive systems. By a process of induction from the various types of data collected during the pilot project, a number of conclusions were arrived at, stated in the form of a list of hypotheses for further testing.