Building an Asynchronous Shared Workspace to Improve Mutual Understanding in Internet Banking Stefano Mastrogiacomo Head of e-business, Pictet & Cie Bd Georges-Favon 29 CH-1204 Geneva, Switzerland
[email protected]
Keywords
e-business, e-banking, relationship management, Internet, grounding, mutual understanding, interfaces, HCI, personalization, private banking. INTRODUCTION
Successful collaboration in a team effort requires that activities are coordinated between individuals through their awareness of others' actions. For example, if I can see what my partner is currently doing and how well she/he performs in achieving our common objective, I can adjust my own behavior to maximize the result of our common effort. Maintaining a shared knowledge around the task results in a greater efficiency of the final outcome. Thus, the primary objective of workspace awareness research is to provide awareness of others' activities (what others are doing, what they have done, etc.) when several actors are working jointly on the same task artifact. Software environments- called shared workspaces- offer such capabilities using various components and visualization techniques. Unfortunately, most awareness-based research has been focused on synchronous interaction so far, relegating the asynchronous aspects to a secondary role. We think that the same factors, which motivate information awareness in a synchronous context, remain valid when interaction is asynchronous. To confirm our hypothesis, we are currently building a web-based prototype aimed at improving mutual understanding in online personal relationship management. IMPROVE GROUNDING IN INTERNET BANKING
The banking sector offers different opportunities to implement asynchronous workspaces whether they are internal, aimed at teamwork support, or external and focused on portfolio manager-client interaction (a highnet-worth individual in this case). A recent study conducted by ethnographer Charline Poirier and Pictet & Cie [34] highlighted that clients ask for more information understandability, for clearer explanations of decisions, and require more context for the information they receive from the asset manager. As mentioned in the study:
According to clients: “Banks should be helping us understand what they send us.” “I think that an asset manager in the future will be required to justify his choices to his clients.”
Confirmed by asset managers : “… one of the biggest problems is that the client doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. When I arrived five years ago, I wanted to make it simple because when people understand they are happy. They have to understand what we’re doing, what’s a share, what’s a bond, what we’re doing.”
This particular topic hasn't been covered by any modern Internet banking system. We think that the real challenge isn't really to provide the user with flashy portfolio visualization and 3D stock quotes analysis, but rather to help manage the commercial relationship, in an area where both the bank and the client try to build a common solution. For example: "We keep your IBM stocks because of X, even if analysts recommend to sell. Are you comfortable with that ?", or "According to your investment profile and your current cash position, we suggest a massive investment in stock N. What's your opinion ?". None of today's modern systems include similar functionality. Firstly, this requires important human input since complex investment decisions cannot be easily commented by machines. Secondly, environments to support such asynchronous interactions have never been developed in banking. EXPLORING FURTHER ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION METHODS
The first objective of the prototype is to develop a framework that offers asynchronous awareness information (Fig. 1), more specifically in a banking application that supports the manager-client relationship. The prototype we are building :
1) displays the artifact bundled with awareness information related to the task and activities directly performed on the task, 2) introduces the concept of grounding contract, in which the relationship between the manager and the client is not considered equal (leader-follower relationship). The system grants “administrator” privileges to the leader of a specific task. Both the client and the manager can play the leader’s role and have a direct influence on the environment. In other words, the leader has the ability to configure the follower’s environment by setting task-related properties.
EXPLORE NEW VISUALIZATION PATTERNS TO SUPPORT ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTION AND ONLINE GROUNDING
ASYNCHRONOUS SHARED WORKSPACE
Media Choice
actions
am, what I am doing, etc.). Unfortunately, the fact that my partners look at the same data I do, even if can see the context in which things are evolving, doesn't guarantee a common understanding. Therefore, level 3 is not granted since a shared screen does not guarantee a shared understanding. The second objective of this prototype is therefore at the fringe of psychology and design (psychobased design): to create a visual environment where level 3 and level 4 are granted. In other words, a system where I know that my partner does (or doesn't) understand what I wanted him to understand; and where we can agree (or disagree) about that common understanding. To achieve that second objective, we are not exploring theoretical declarative frameworks as known in Artificial Intelligence. We rely more on a pragmatic approach and validate our results with usability testings.
actions Informations, Decisions
Informations, Decisions
Fig. 1: Computer-mediated communication using asynchronous shared workspaces. EXTENDING THE PERCEPTION LEVEL TO THE GROUNDING LEVEL
The second objective of our prototype is to extend understanding. There are four levels of mutuality of knowledge (adapted from Dillenbourg and Traum, 1999): 1. A can infer that B can (not) access X: For instance, if A grants B reader access on his personal mail box (X), then A knows that B can access X. 2. A can infer that B has (not) perceived X: For instance, if A gets an authenticated notification that B has read his last email from A, A can infer that B has read it. 3. A can infer that B has (mis-) understood X: For instance, in an email, if A says "let's meet as usual" (X) and B replies "see you at 10:00, at the cafeteria", and A was thinking so, then X is grounded. 4. A can infer that B (dis-)agrees This includes verbal agreement, but also (dis-) agreement on a grounded action. In current groupware tools, the WYSIWIS (What You See Is What I See) concept grants that level 2 is reached: I know what my partner sees because it's what I see. Awareness tools, such as shared workspaces, grant this very same level but in a relaxed- WYSIWIS system: my partner sees something different because the system tries to render what I see including part of my context (where I
As findings occur, we develop visualization components that provide support to asynchronous awareness information. Current synchronous workspace environments use original visualization techniques such as the Fisheye Text Viewer, the Semantic Cursor for Relative Positions, etc. to support workspace awareness [21]. In a previous study we have conducted about video games user interfaces [30], we have noticed that these particular applications were producing state-of-the art user interfaces (UI) based on specific “visual patterns”. These patterns included elements such as transparency, background-object visual interaction, motion, and advanced assistance techniques. The careful use of these patterns resulted in simple, aesthetically pleasing and functional user interfaces. These patterns can easily be adapted from video games to more traditional UIs. For example, in a workflow application, a button could display a transparent map showing the current positioning of the task in the whole business process providing thus progression and localization information. The final implementation of our asynchronous workspace will largely benefit from these video games techniques.
Fig. 2: For exemple, transparency is used in video games to display properties of the on-going game while keeping the context visible.
FURTHER DIRECTIONS
In our first prototype, we focus exclusively on text-based communication complemented with graphical elements. Multimedia issues may or may not be addressed according to findings. We believe in transparent access to the workspace, but given time constraints, communication issues based on PDAs, GSM screens and other small devices UI will not be explored. Of course, the advent of WAP-enabled devices will facilitate us a lot to provide mobile access to the workspace. Regarding the UI, we will not explore 3D capabilities, we are developing a set of visual patterns exclusively based on 2D visualization techniques in their larger definition, including transparency and shading. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to particularly thank Pierre Dillenbourg (University of Geneva), Thomas Steiner (University of Lausanne) and Charline Poirier (Scient) for both editorial and academic support. REFERENCES
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