Design scenarios for web-based management of online information

Abstract

The Internet enables access to more information, from a greater variety of perspectives and with greater immediacy, than ever before. A person may be interested in information to become more informed or to coordinate his or her local activities and place them into a larger, more global context. The challenge, as has been noted by many, is to sift through all the information to find what is relevant without becoming overwhelmed. Furthermore, the selected information must be put into an actionable form. The diversity of the Web has important consequences for the variety of ideas that are now available. While people once relied on newspaper editors to shape their view of the world, today’s technology creates room for a more democratic approach. Today it is easy to pull news feeds from a variety of sources and aggregate them. It is less easy to push that information to a variety of channels. At a higher level, we might have the goal of collecting all the available information about a certain topic, on a daily basis. There are many new technologies available under the umbrella of Web 2.0, but it can be difficult to use them together for the management of online information. Web-based support for online communication management is the most appropriate choice to address the deficiencies apparent with current technologies. We consider the requirements and potential designs for such information management support, by following an example related to local food.