Searching the World Wide Web - Finding the Right Information the First Time

摘要

This paper addresses a real-world problem on how to help a multi-disciplinary team become more productive. A group of faculty members from various disciplines as related to the development of a smart phone app brought together undergraduate students from these various disciplines and helped them develop a state-of-the-art App. We found that communication across the various discipline-specific cultures was the most challenging, both at the levels of professors and students. Misunderstandings were common because of differences in their intra-disciplinary languages, tools, physical models, and skill sets, and intra-disciplinary cultures in terms of mental models of other disciplines and stereotyping. However, we also found that much of the uncertainty and friction can be overcome by providing a solid foundation of expectations, milestones and communication mechanisms from which to work. This paper addresses one important aspect of that effort, viz., of providing access to comprehensive app-specific content knowledge on the World Wide Web so the groups can progress without much of communication gaps. Though this paper addresses issues specific to content of the apps, the same approach can be applied to providing a common platform for communication with regard to engineering, aesthetics, marketing, and other aspects of app development as well. The semantic web approach is generic enough to be applied for any multi-disciplinary setting. The effort is worth the results in terms of reduced misunderstandings and enhanced productivity.