TY - JOUR T1 - Implications for hybrid newswork from the activities of local US television journalists during COVID JF - Journalism Practice Y1 - In Press A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Kian Loong Lua A1 - Raghav Raheja AB -

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, many local television (TV) newsrooms decided to have employees work from home (WFH) or from the field rather than from the newsroom, creating a kind of hybrid work characterized by flexible work location. From a review of research on telework and WFH, we identified possible impacts of WFH on work and on workers, with a particular focus on news work and news workers. Data on the impacts of hybrid work are drawn from interviews with local television news directors and journalists in the United States and observations of remote work. We found that through creative application of technology, WFH news workers could successfully create a newscast, albeit with some concerns about story quality. However, WFH did not seem to satisfy workers’ needs for socialization or learning individually or as a group. Lifted restrictions on gatherings are mitigating some of the experienced problems, but we expect to see continued challenges to news workers’ informal learning in hybrid work settings.

ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Data quality up to the third observing run of Advanced LIGO: Gravity Spy glitch classifications JF - Classical and Quantum Gravity Y1 - 2023 A1 - Glanzer, J A1 - Banagiri, S A1 - Coughlin, S B A1 - Soni, S A1 - Zevin, M A1 - Berry, C P L A1 - Patane, O A1 - Bahaadini, S A1 - Rohani, N A1 - Crowston, K A1 - Østerlund, C KW - FOS: Physical sciences KW - General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) KW - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) VL - 40 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Perceived benefits of open data are improving but scientists still lack resources, skills, and rewards JF - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Y1 - 2023 A1 - Borycz, Joshua A1 - Olendorf, Robert A1 - Specht, Alison A1 - Grant, Bruce A1 - Crowston, Kevin A1 - Tenopir, Carol A1 - Allard, Suzie A1 - Rice, Natalie M. A1 - Hu, Rachael A1 - Sandusky, Robert J. VL - 10 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Artificial intelligence in information systems: State of the art and research roadmap JF - Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) Y1 - 2022 A1 - Pär J. Ågerfalk A1 - Kieran Conboy A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa A1 - Jenny Eriksson Lundström A1 - Patrick Mikalef A1 - Sudha Ram AB -

Many would argue that artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a technology but represents a paradigmatic shift in the relationship between humans and machines. Much of the literature assumes that AI-powered practices are substantially different and profoundly changes organizational structures, communication, affordances, and ecosystems. However, research in AI is often fragmented and lacks clarity. While the Information Systems (IS) field can play a pivotal role in the emergence and use of AI, there is a need for a clear direction that specifies how IS can contribute and what are to be the key research themes and questions. This paper draws on a PDW at ICIS 2020 and the discussions that followed. It summarizes and synthesizes five decades of the impact of AI on organizational practices, providing views from various perspectives. It identifies weaknesses in the current AI literature as measured against conceptual clarity, theoretical glue, cumulative tradition, parsimony, and applicability. The paper concludes by identifying direct actions that the IS research community can undertake to address these issues. The final contribution is a next-step research agenda to guide AI research in the coming years.

VL - 50 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Communicating with the masses from isolation: What happened when local television journalists worked from home T2 - Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences Y1 - 2022 A1 - Keren Henderson A1 - Raghav Raheja A1 - Kevin Crowston AB -

In response to the COVID-19 crises, many local TV newsrooms decided to have employees work from home (WFH) or the field rather than from the newsroom. From a review of research on telework, we identified possible impacts of WFH on worker effectiveness, conceptualized as including output, individual satisfaction and growth, and group well-being. From a case study of a local TV newsroom and interviews with news directors, we found that WFH was successful in creating a newscast, albeit with some concerns about story quality. However, WFH did not seem to satisfy workers individually or as a group. The current lifting of restrictions on gatherings might mitigate some of the experienced problems, but we expect to see challenges to news worker learning with continued WFH.

JF - Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences CY - Virtual due to COVID ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Discovering features in gravitational-wave data through detector characterization, citizen science and machine learning JF - Classical and Quantum Gravity Y1 - 2021 A1 - S Soni A1 - C P L Berry A1 - S B Coughlin A1 - M Harandi A1 - C B Jackson A1 - K Crowston A1 - C Østerlund A1 - O Patane A1 - A K Katsaggelos A1 - L Trouille A1 - V-G Baranowski A1 - W F Domainko A1 - K Kaminski A1 - M A Lobato Rodriguez A1 - U Marciniak A1 - P Nauta A1 - G Niklasch A1 - R R Rote A1 - B Téglás A1 - C Unsworth A1 - C Zhang VL - 38 IS - 19 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Examining Open Innovation in Science (OIS): What Open Innovation can and cannot offer the science of science JF - Innovation: Organization & Management Y1 - 2021 A1 - Susanne Beck A1 - Marcel LaFlamme A1 - Carsten Bergenholtz A1 - Marcel Bogers A1 - Tiare-Maria Brasseur A1 - Marie-Louise Conradsen A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Diletta Di Marco A1 - Agnes Effert A1 - Despoina Filiou A1 - Lars Frederiksen A1 - Thomas Gillier A1 - Marc Gruber A1 - Carolin Haeussler A1 - Karin Hoisl A1 - Olga Kokshagina A1 - Maria-Theresa Norn A1 - Marion Poetz A1 - Gernot Pruschak A1 - Laia Pujol Priego A1 - Agnieszka Radziwon A1 - Alexander Ruser A1 - Henry Sauermann A1 - Sonali Shah A1 - Julia Suess-Reyes A1 - Christopher L. Tucci A1 - Philipp Tuertscher A1 - Jane Bjørn Vedel A1 - Roberto Verganti A1 - Jonathan Wareham A1 - Sunny Mosangzi Xu AB -

Scholars across disciplines increasingly hear calls for more open and collaborative approaches to scientific research. The concept of Open Innovation in Science (OIS) provides a framework that integrates dispersed research efforts aiming to understand the antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of applying open and collaborative research practices. While the OIS framework has already been taken up by science of science scholars, its conceptual underpinnings require further specification. In this essay, we critically examine the OIS concept and bring to light two key aspects: 1) how OIS builds upon Open Innovation (OI) research by adopting its attention to boundary-crossing knowledge flows and by adapting other concepts developed and researched in OI to the science context as exemplified by two OIS cases in the area of research funding; 2) how OIS conceptualises knowledge flows across boundaries. While OI typically focuses on well-defined organizational boundaries, we argue that blurry and even invisible boundaries between communities of practice may more strongly constrain flows of knowledge related to openness and collaboration in science. Given the uptake of this concept, this essay brings needed clarity to the meaning of OIS, which has no particular normative orientation toward a close coupling between science and industry. We end by outlining the essay’s contributions to OI and the science of science, as well as to science practitioners.

ER - TY - Generic T1 - Effects of stigmergic and explicit coordination on Wikipedia article quality T2 - Hawai'i International Conference on System Science Y1 - 2020 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Amira Rezgui AB -

Prior research on Wikipedia has noted the importance of both explicit coordination of edits (i.e., through the article Talk page) and stigmergic coordination (i.e., through the article itself). Using a panel data set of article quality and edits for 23 articles over time, we examine the impact of different kinds of edits on article quality. We find that stigmergically-coordinated edits seem to have the biggest effect on quality, but that explicit coordination of major edits also predicts article quality. The findings have implications for both research on coordination inWikipedia and for supporting editors.

JF - Hawai'i International Conference on System Science CY - Wailea, HI ER - TY - JOUR T1 - GitLab: Work where you want, when you want JF - Journal of Organizational Design Y1 - 2020 A1 - Choudhury, Prithwiraj A1 - Crowston, Kevin A1 - Dahlander, Linus A1 - Minervini, Marco S. A1 - Raghuram, Sumita AB -

GitLab is a software company that works “all remote” at the scale of more than 1000 employees located in more than 60 countries. GitLab has no physical office and its employees can work from anywhere they choose. Any step of the organizational life of a GitLab employee (e.g., hiring, onboarding and firing) is performed remotely, except for a yearly companywide gathering. GitLab strongly relies on asynchronous coordination, allowing employees to work anytime they want. After highlighting some of the main practices implemented by GitLab to effectively work all remotely and asynchronously, I asked renowned organizational scientists their thoughts on this interesting case and to question the generalizability of the all remote asynchronous model. Understanding whether and under what conditions this model can succeed can be of guidance for organizational designers that are now considering different remote models in response of the COVID-19 shock and its aftermath.

VL - 9 SN - 2245-408X IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Knowledge Tracing to Model Learning in Online Citizen Science Projects JF - IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies Y1 - 2020 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Carsten Østerlund A1 - Tae Kyoung Lee A1 - Corey Brian Jackson A1 - Mahboobeh Harandi A1 - Sarah Allen A1 - Sara Bahaadini A1 - Scott Coughlin A1 - Aggelos Katsaggelos A1 - Shane Larson A1 - Neda Rohani A1 - Joshua Smith A1 - Laura Trouille A1 - Michael Zevin AB -

We present the design of a citizen science system that uses machine learning to guide the presentation of image classification tasks to newcomers to help them more quickly learn how to do the task while still contributing to the work of the project. A Bayesian model for tracking volunteer learning for training with tasks with uncertain outcomes is presented and fit to data from 12,986 volunteer contributors. The model can be used both to estimate the ability of volunteers and to decide the classification of an image. A simulation of the model applied to volunteer promotion and image retirement suggests that the model requires fewer classifications than the current system.

VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Teaching Citizen Scientists to Categorize Glitches using Machine-Learning-Guided Training JF - Computers in Human Behavior Y1 - 2020 A1 - Corey Jackson A1 - Carsten Østerlund A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Mahboobeh Harandi A1 - Sarah Allen A1 - Sara Bahaadini A1 - Scott Coughlin A1 - Vicky Kalogera A1 - Aggelos Katsaggelos A1 - Shane Larson A1 - Neda Rohani A1 - Joshua Smith A1 - Laura Trouille A1 - Michael Zevin AB -

Training users in online communities is important for making high performing contributors. However, several conundrums exists in choosing the most effective approaches to training users. For example, if it takes time to learn to do the task correctly, then the initial contributions may not be of high enough quality to be useful. We conducted an online field experiment where we recruited users (N = 386) in a web-based citizen-science project to evaluate the two training approaches. In one training regime, users received one-time training and were asked to learn and apply twenty classes to the data. In the other approach, users were gradually exposed to classes of data that were selected by trained machine learning algorithms as being members of particular classes. The results of our analysis revealed that the gradual training produced “high performing contributors”. In our comparison of the treatment and control groups we found users who experienced gradual training performed significantly better on the task (an average accuracy of 90% vs. 54%), contributed more work (an average of 228 vs. 121 classifications), and were retained in the project for a longer period of time (an average of 2.5 vs. 2 sessions). The results suggests online production communities seeking to train newcomers would benefit from training regimes that gradually introduce them to the work of the project using real tasks.

VL - 105 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Classifying the unknown: Discovering novel gravitational-wave detector glitches using similarity learning JF - Physical Review D Y1 - 2019 A1 - Scott Coughlin A1 - Sara Bahaadini A1 - Neda Rohani A1 - Michael Zevin A1 - Patane, Oli A1 - Mahboobeh Harandi A1 - Corey Brian Jackson A1 - Noroozi, V. A1 - Sarah Allen A1 - Areeda, J. A1 - Coughlin, M. A1 - Ruiz, P. A1 - Berry, C. P. L. A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Aggelos Katsaggelos A1 - Andrew Lundgren A1 - Carsten Østerlund A1 - Joshua Smith A1 - Laura Trouille A1 - Vicky Kalogera AB -

The observation of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences by LIGO and Virgo has begun a new era in astronomy. A critical challenge in making detections is determining whether loud transient features in the data are caused by gravitational waves or by instrumental or environmental sources. The citizen-science project Gravity Spy has been demonstrated as an efficient infrastructure for classifying known types of noise transients (glitches) through a combination of data analysis performed by both citizen volunteers and machine learning. We present the next iteration of this project, using similarity indices to empower citizen scientists to create large data sets of unknown transients, which can then be used to facilitate supervised machine-learning characterization. This new evolution aims to alleviate a persistent challenge that plagues both citizen-science and instrumental detector work: the ability to build large samples of relatively rare events. Using two families of transient noise that appeared unexpectedly during LIGO's second observing run, we demonstrate the impact that the similarity indices could have had on finding these new glitch types in the Gravity Spy program.

VL - 99 IS - 8 ER - TY - UNPB T1 - The impact of initial group characteristics on quality in online communities of creation Y1 - 2019 A1 - Amira Rezgui A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Nicolas Jullien AB - Open projects aimed at creating new knowledge (also known as online communities of creation) are increasingly central in the production of new and innovative knowledge. In our research study, we are interested in the impact of initial group characteristics on the quality of the output. We studied in particular Wikipedia in different three languages: Arabic, Romanian and Thai. Our results confirm the importance of the initial project group. We found a positive impact of a large initial group formed by members with an intermediate level of diversity in the focus of their editing but having an equal and lower level of longevity. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Socio-technical affordances for stigmergic coordination implemented in MIDST, a tool for data-science teams JF - Proceedings of the ACM Y1 - 2019 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Jeffery Saltz A1 - Amira Rezgui A1 - Yatish Hegde A1 - Sangseok You KW - stigmergic coordination; translucency; awareness; data-science teams AB -

We present a conceptual framework for socio-technical affordances for stigmergic coordination, that is, coordination supported by a shared work product. Based on research on free/libre open source software development, we theorize that stigmergic coordination depends on three sets of socio-technical affordances: the visibility and combinability of the work, along with defined genres of work contributions. As a demonstration of the utility of the developed framework, we use it as the basis for the design and implementation of a system, MIDST, that supports these affordances and that we thus expect to support stigmergic coordination. We describe an initial assessment of the impact of the tool on the work of project teams of three to six data-science students that suggests that the tool was useful but also in need of further development. We conclude with plans for future research and an assessment of theory-driven system design.

VL - 3 IS - CSCW ER - TY - Generic T1 - Stigmergic coordination in Wikipedia T2 - OpenSym Y1 - 2018 A1 - Amira Rezgui A1 - Kevin Crowston KW - Coordination KW - distributed groups KW - on-line epistemic community KW - Stigmergy KW - Wikipedia AB -

We examine a novel approach to coordination, namely stigmergic coordination, that is, coordination mediated by changes to a shared work product. Stigmergy stands in contrast to the two coordination approaches identified in the existing literature on coordination, explicit coordination, based on direct communication through discussion page or user talk pages, and implicit coordination, based on unspoken expectations and shared mental models of the task to be accomplished. We look for evidence of stigmergic coordination in the context of Wikipedia, as one of the most successful experiments in online collaborative knowledge building. Using a novel approach to identifying edits to the same part of a Wikipedia article, we show that a majority of edits to two example articles are not associated with discussion on the article Talk page, suggesting the possibility of stigmergic coordination. However, some amount of discussion does seem to be related to article quality, suggesting the limits to this approach to coordination.

JF - OpenSym UR - http://www.opensym.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/OpenSym2018_paper_34.pdf ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Gravity Spy: Integrating Advanced LIGO Detector Characterization, Machine Learning, and Citizen Science JF - Classical and Quantum Gravity Y1 - 2017 A1 - Michael Zevin A1 - Scott Coughlin A1 - Sara Bahaadini A1 - Emre Besler A1 - Neda Rohani A1 - Sarah Allen A1 - Miriam Cabero A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Aggelos Katsaggelos A1 - Shane Larson A1 - Tae Kyoung Lee A1 - Chris Lintott A1 - Tyson Littenberg A1 - Andrew Lundgren A1 - Carsten Oesterlund A1 - Joshua Smith A1 - Laura Trouille A1 - Vicky Kalogera VL - 34 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Inter-team coordination in large-scale agile development: A test of organizational discontinuity theory T2 - The Large-Scale Agile Development Workshop, XP Conference Y1 - 2016 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Chudoba, Katherine M. A1 - Mary Beth Watson-Manheim A1 - Pouya Rahmati AB - We draw on Organizational Discontinuity Theory (ODT) to identify factors that increase communication and coordination problems between teams working on large software development projects. ODT posits that faced with a disruption in the expected flow of communication, called a discontinuity, individuals must make sense of the disruption to address the problem. They may be motivated to pay more attention to the situation and consider alternative actions to deal with the discontinuity, leading to the emergence of continuities, which are new behaviors, group practices and expectations. Continuities reduce or eliminate the attention and effort required to understand and manage the situation associated with problematic discontinuities. We propose a mixed-method study based on this model to examine the effects of discontinuities and the development of continuities on inter-team coordination in large-scale agile software development. JF - The Large-Scale Agile Development Workshop, XP Conference ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Open Source Technology Development T2 - Handbook of Science and Technology Convergence Y1 - 2015 A1 - Kevin Crowston ED - Bainbridge, William Sims ED - Roco, Mihail C. JF - Handbook of Science and Technology Convergence PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham SN - 978-3-319-04033-2 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Editorial: The role of information systems in enabling open innovation JF - Journal of the Association for Information Systems Y1 - 2014 A1 - Eoin Whelan A1 - Kieran Conboy A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Lorraine Morgan A1 - Matti Rossi VL - 15 UR - http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1692&context=jais IS - 11 ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Problems in the use-centered development of a taxonomy of web genres T2 - Genres on the Web: Computational Models and Empirical Studies Y1 - 2010 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. A1 - Rubleske, Joe ED - Mehler, Alexander ED - Sharoff, Serge ED - Santini, Marina JF - Genres on the Web: Computational Models and Empirical Studies T3 - Series: Text, Speech and Language Technology (Series Editors: Ide, Nancy & Véronis, Jean) PB - Springer CY - New York VL - 42 SN - 978-90-481-9177-2 ER - TY - CONF T1 - Building a Corpus of Genre-Tagged Web Pages for an Information-Access Experiment T2 - Colloquium on Web Genres, Corpus Linguistics Y1 - 2007 A1 - Rubleske, Joe A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. A1 - Chun, You-Lee JF - Colloquium on Web Genres, Corpus Linguistics CY - Birmingham, UK ER - TY - Generic T1 - Investigating the Dynamics of FLOSS Development Teams (Poster) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Li, Na A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Heckman, Robert A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Liddy, Elizabeth D. A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Allen, Eileen E. A1 - Scialdone, Michael J. A1 - Inoue, Keisuke A1 - Harwell, Sarah A1 - Rowe, Steven A1 - McCracken, Nancy A1 - Wiggins, Andrea N1 - SD 2007 poster - Full Adobe PDF 2007 HSD PI's conference poster reporting on the grant project work to date in a full Adobe PDF file. HSD 2007 poster - Small PDF HSD 2007 conference grant progress reporting poster in a smaller PDF file. ER - TY - Generic T1 - Challenges in creating a taxonomy for genres of digital documents T2 - Proceedings of the ISKO Conference Y1 - 2006 A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. A1 - Chun, You-Lee A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - D'Ignazio, J. A1 - Rubleske, Joe JF - Proceedings of the ISKO Conference CY - Vienna, Austria ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Coordination theory: A ten-year retrospective T2 - Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems Y1 - 2006 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Rubleske, Joe A1 - James Howison ED - Zhang, P. ED - Galletta, D. KW - Coordination AB - Since the initial publication in 1994, Coordination Theory has been referenced in nearly 300 journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and theses. Coordination Theory provides an approach to a core problem in HCI: analyzing group work to suggest alternative approaches involving computer support. Coordination Theory suggests identifying the dependencies between the tasks the different group members are carrying out and the coordination mechanisms the group use to coordinate their work and then considering alternative mechanisms. This chapter will analyze the contribution of this body of research to determine how Coordination Theory has been used for user task analysis and modelling for HCI. Issues that will be addressed include: 1)how the theory has been applied; 2) factors that led to the success of the theory; and 3)identification of areas needing further research. JF - Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems PB - M. E. Sharpe, Inc. ER - TY - Generic T1 - Investigating the Dynamics of FLOSS Development Teams (Poster) Y1 - 2006 A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Heckman, Robert A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Liddy, Elizabeth D. A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Allen, Eileen E. A1 - Inoue, Keisuke A1 - Harwell, Sarah A1 - Rowe, Steven A1 - McCracken, Nancy N1 - Poster describing the current state of the project for the HSD Principal Investigators' conference, 14-15 September 2006, Washington DC. ER - TY - CONF T1 - Can Genre Metadata Improve Information Retrieval? T2 - Connections: The 10th Annual Great Lakes Information Science Conference Y1 - 2005 A1 - Rubleske, Joe A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. JF - Connections: The 10th Annual Great Lakes Information Science Conference CY - McGill University, Montreal, Quebec ER - TY - Generic T1 - Genre based navigation on the Web T2 - Proceedings of the 34th Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) Y1 - 2001 A1 - Roussinov, Dmitri A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Nilan, Michael A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. A1 - Xiaozhong Liu A1 - Cai, J. AB - We report on our ongoing study of using the genre of Web pages to facilitate information exploration. By genre, we mean socially recognized regularities of form and purpose in documents (e.g., a letter, a memo, a research paper). Our study had three phases. First, through a user study, we identified genres which most/least frequently meet searchers' information needs. We found that certain genres are better suited for certain types of needs. We identified five (5) major groups of document genres that might be used in an interactive search tool that would allow genrebased navigation. We tried to balance the following dual objectives: 1) each group should be recognizable by a computer algorithm as easily as possible 2) each group has a better chance of satisfying particular types of information needs. Finally, we developed a novel user interface for a web searching that allows genre-based navigation through three major functionalities: 1) limiting search to specified genres 2) visualizing the hierarchy of genres discovered in the search results and 3) accepting user feedback on the relevancy of the specified genres. JF - Proceedings of the 34th Hawai'i International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) PB - IEEE CY - Maui, HI, January SN - 0-7695-0981-9 ER - TY - MGZN T1 - Identifying document genre to improve web search effectiveness Y1 - 2001 A1 - Kwaśnik, Barbara H. A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Nilan, Michael A1 - Roussinov, Dmitri JF - The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology VL - 27 UR - http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-01/kwasnikartic.html ER - TY - Generic T1 - How do experienced Information Lens users use rules? T2 - Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGHI) Y1 - 1989 A1 - Mackay, Wendy E. A1 - Malone, Thomas W. A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Rao, Ramana A1 - Rosenblitt, David A1 - Card, Stuart K. ED - Bice, Ken ED - Lewis, Clayton KW - Computer-Mediated Communication AB - The Information Lens provides electronic mail users with the ability to write rules that automatically sort, select, and filter their messages. This paper describes preliminary results from an eighteen-month investigation of the use of this system at a corporate test site. We report the experiences of 13 voluntary users who have each had at least three months experience with the most recent version of the system. We found that: 1. People without significant computer experience are able to create and use rules effectively. 2. Useful rules can be created based on the fields present in all messages (e.g., searching for distribution lists or one's own name in the address fields or for character strings in the subject field), even without any special message templates. 3. People use rules both to prioritize messages before reading them and to sort messages into folders for storage after reading them. 4. People use delete rules primarily to filter out messages from low-priority distribution lists, not to delete personal messages to themselves. JF - Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGHI) CY - Austin, TX N1 - Proceedings Reprinted as ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, Volume 20, Issue SI. ER -