Conceptual misfits in e‐mail‐based current‐awareness interaction

Purpose – This research aims to identify some requirements for supporting user interactions with electronic current‐awareness alert systems based on data from a professional work environment. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were gathered using contextual inquiry observations with 21 workers at the London office of an international law firm. The analysis uses CASSM (“Concept‐based Analysis of Surface and Structural Misfits”), a usability evaluation method structured around identifying mismatches, or “misfits”, between user‐concepts and concepts represented within a system. Findings – Participants were frequently overwhelmed by e‐mail alerts, and a key requirement is to support efficient interaction. Several misfits, which act as barriers to efficient reviewing and follow‐on activities, are demonstrated. These relate to a lack of representation of key user‐concepts at the interface and/or within the system, including alert items and their properties, source documents, “back‐story”, primary sources, content categorisations and user collections. Research limitations/implications – Given these misfits, a set of requirements is derived to improve the efficiency with which users can achieve key outcomes with current‐awareness information as these occur within a professional work environment. Originality/value – The findings will be of interest to current‐awareness providers. The approach is relevant to information interaction researchers interested in deriving design requirements from naturalistic studies.