Azeen Chamarbagwala

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• Azeen Chamarbagwala
• Steve Kafka
• Ian Liu

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eD

• is an asynchronous, online decision-making tool
• organizes unstructured problems
• facilitates collaboration
• targets social groups

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The Motivation

• Emails clogging your inbox?
• Difficulty figuring out group consensus?
• Someone forced to take charge and make a command
  decision?
• Now for a real example from the SIMS community
• (names changed to protect the innocent)

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Email 1 1140 a.m.

• Adam
• i say we go somewhere different tonight. anyone
  know if the berkeley art museum has re-opened?
  becketts? bison brewery? thalasa???

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Email 2 1228 p.m.

• Bob
• I like the art museum... someplace a little
  more somber would be in order.
• Is it open? I don't know, but it should be...
  I'll try to find out.

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Email 3 1229 p.m.

• Claire
• my vote is for becketts.

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Email 4 1229 p.m.

• Diane
• Thalasa. even henry's. there are a lot of places
  to sit there.

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Email 5 1254 p.m.

• Adam
• the cafe at the museum has not re-opened yet.
  maybe another month they said.

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Email 6 347 p.m.

• Eloise
• Well, I don't see a consensus rapidly emerging,
  but since I'm not familiar with most of these
  places, I don't feel particularly qualified to
  comment. My two cents Can we pick someplace that
  has food? I expect to be starving by the time I
  get there. BTW, I don't know what the planned
  timing of "that time" is, but I'll be on the late
  shift again (i.e., not arriving until at least
  630).

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Email 7 447 p.m.

• Adam
• since no one is stepping up i'll be at becketts
  by 545. haven't been there, but they do have
  food.

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Needs Assessment

• Focus Groups
• Structured Interviews
• Used results to help create requirements for eD

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Whats out there now?

• Yahoo Groups
• Evite
• Literature Review
• Current tools built for professional groups or
  synchronous communications
• Message board facilitates collaboration

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What makes eD different?

• Structured decision making process
• Participants can change their minds and their
  votes
• Emulates face to face interaction
• Different voting methods

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Design of eD

• PHP with a MySQL database
• Created for the decision-making needs of social
  groups, not business/professional groups
• Option of anonymity
• Group can contribute ideas and suggestions
• Automatically generated vote reminder
• Decision results sent out to participants
• Multiple voting methods

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Current Voting Methods

• Most Votes Wins
• All Must Agree
• Rank Order
• Point Allocation

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Most Votes Wins
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All Must Agree
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Rank Order
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Point Allocation
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Creating a decision
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Thirsty Thursday revisited
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Thirsty Thursday revisited(cont.)
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Email Notification
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Future Work

• Cancel decision
• Other voting methods
• Denote not participating
• Tie vote to another participant
• Preview comments
• Graphical depiction of results
• Invite others to participate
• User authentication