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Using Guides to Maneuver Novice Users through the Web

Users can access the Web with a Web connection and basic computer skills. Browsers, such as Netscape and Mosaic, take advantage of Windows’ point and click environment and graphical interface to further facilitate Web use. With ease comes the surge of novice users, including managers, rushing to encounter the global electronic network. This results in the continual need to maintain ease of use.

Some software agents on the Web, called guides, learn user habits and preferences and adapt to individual needs. This is beneficial for managers who are Web novices, because an adaptive and easy-to-use interface requires minimal training and can be used directly by the manager without an intermediary. The more managers can rely on guides to lead Web experiences, the more time they have to focus on the content and significance of information they encounter.

ZooWorks from Hitachi is a guide that remembers and sorts each Web site that a manager views.5 This information is placed in a personal index for future access. The index organizes and structures Web viewing and provides an easy way to locate past sites by keywords, a date, or a range of dates. Because it manages Web information more effectively, ZooWorks helps managers spend their time using information rather than searching for it.

Using Personal Assistants to Customize Web Information

Diverse visitors stop by organizational Web sites, and different types of people peruse individual Web pages. Because there are myriad purposes for visiting a Web site, a Web page needs to be flexible enough to change to serve each purpose. A financial manager of a company, for example, would be interested in different information than a marketing manager.

When managers locate pages of interest, the information needs to be presented in a useful, understandable way. Personal assistants help present tabular, textual, and graphical information that has been custom-tailored to manager needs. Agents such as BroadVision, Inc.’s One-To-One product work to make Web pages more relevant to individual users by customizing them based on a user’s demographics and usage patterns.6 Instead of viewing static, general information, managers can interact with personalized Web pages that have been customized through a learning process. For example, a financial manager may see stock quotes and links to financial news articles when entering the company Web site; whereas a marketing manager may be linked to sales information and recent promotions.

LIMITATIONS OF WEB AGENTS

Although Web agents add great value to the growing number of managerial Web experiences, they do have some limitations. First, agents can be resource intensive; they often must be monitored and their activity needs to be harnessed. If an agent makes a large number of requests in a short amount of time, servers may slow down to a crawl or crash. Some Web servers opt to boycott agent activity and technically prevent agents from interaction. Agents that reside on user machines must be updated and regularly maintained to ensure continued usefulness. In addition, although search engines provide a good starting point for locating information, general searches can result in too much or irrelevant information. Without the proper intervention, agents used to reduce information overload can aggravate the problem.

CONCLUSION

Managers who increasingly use the Web to support their information needs can use the searching, monitoring, and customizing capabilities of intelligent agents to address Web limitations. By custom-tailoring information to individual executives; extracting, filtering, compressing, and tracking critical data; and accessing and integrating a broad range of internal and external data, these software programs help support basic management information needs.

As intelligent agents mature, their minor limitations will be overcome. In the future, as organizations integrate the Web into their technology plans, they will have to increasingly rely on intelligent agents to ensure effective Web use.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bottoms, D. “Agents of Change.” Industry Week 243, No. 16, 1994, pp. 49-54. IBM White Paper. “Intelligent Agent Strategy” http://activist.gpl.ibm.com:8, 1995.

McKie, S. “Software Agents: Application Intelligence Goes Undercover.” DBMS 8, No.4, 1995, pp. 56-60.

Watson, H. J., Rainer, R. K., and Koh, C. E. “Executive Information Systems: A Framework for Development and a Survey of Current Practices.” MIS Quarterly, March 1991, pp. 13-30.

References

1.  http://www.cs.colostate.edu/dreiling/smartform.html.
2.  http://altavista.digital.com/; http://www.lycos.com/; http://yahoo.com/.
3.  http://www.specter.com/;http://www.firstfloor.com/.
4.  http://www.pointcast.com/.
5.  http://www.zoosoft.com/.
6.  http://www.broadvision.com/.


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