Refinement of Knowledge Sharing Platforms to Promote Effective Use: A Use Case

Abstract

This work focuses on the improvement of a line of corporate knowledge management systems, knowledge repositories. For the implementation of such systems, companies can deploy important means for small gains. Indeed, management services often notice very limited use compared to what they actually expect. We present a use case of a five-step re-designing user-centered approach that combines a top-down content architecture, integration with other corporate information systems and adapted interfaces and interactions design to increase the use of these artifacts. Our implementation is done on the knowledge repository used by operators from Société du Canal de Provence (SCP),a French water management company. Their system was taken into production but very occasionally used. We describe the reasons for this limited use and we propose a design methodology adapted to the context. Promoting the effective use of the system, our approach has been experimented and evaluated with a panel of users working at SCP. Results of our semi-structured questionnaire reveal that more than half of the participant are satisfied and present a positive attitude towards the re-designed system.