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An Internet In<strong>format</strong>ion Service for the Doma<strong>in</strong> of Personnel and<br />

Development<br />

The Doma<strong>in</strong><br />

Sheila P. Naujoks<br />

School of Cognitive and Comput<strong>in</strong>g Sciences, University of Sussex, UK,<br />

email: sheilan@cogs.susx.ac.uk<br />

Laurie Griffiths<br />

Personnel and Development Communications Ltd., UK,<br />

email: 100105.1355@Compuserve.com<br />

Theodoros N. Arvanitis<br />

School of Cognitive and Comput<strong>in</strong>g Sciences, University of Sussex, UK,<br />

email: theoa@cogs.susx.ac.uk<br />

Personnel and development are <strong>in</strong>herent concerns of any organisation. Every company, no matter how small,<br />

has to recruit, tra<strong>in</strong>, assess and pay their workforce. This is where the demand for <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion, products and<br />

services for this sector comes from.<br />

At present, personnel managers need to access many different sources of <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion - directories,<br />

publications, specialist consultants and other <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion services - <strong>in</strong> order to fulfil all their varied tasks. This<br />

is very time consum<strong>in</strong>g and often costly and it therefore would be desirable if there was one source of<br />

<strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion which would provide everyth<strong>in</strong>g.<br />

The Internet and Personnel and Development<br />

The Internet and particularly the World Wide Web could be this s<strong>in</strong>gle source of <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion, cater<strong>in</strong>g for all<br />

the needs of personnel and development. This is because it is widely accessible - all one needs is a computer<br />

and modem; most companies have the former and an ever <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g number is gett<strong>in</strong>g an Internet connection.<br />

There is no need anymore to store vast amounts of publications and no time is wasted to f<strong>in</strong>d relevant<br />

<strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion amongst them.<br />

In contrast to static <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion conta<strong>in</strong>ed <strong>in</strong> any other publications - be it electronic or on paper - WWW<br />

pages can be “up-to-the-m<strong>in</strong>ute” and therefore the user will always be presented with correct <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion and<br />

the latest updates. This is important <strong>in</strong> personnel and development areas such as employment law and useful<br />

for announcements regard<strong>in</strong>g changes of place or date of conferences, for example.<br />

However, as the WWW is still <strong>in</strong> its <strong>in</strong>fancy, its structure and organisation leaves a lot to be desired. Users that<br />

are not go<strong>in</strong>g to a specific URL but <strong>in</strong>stead browse and search the WWW to f<strong>in</strong>d <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion about a certa<strong>in</strong><br />

topic, tend to f<strong>in</strong>d that they have to move through a vast amount of ‘junk’ before they get to a useful web page.<br />

Given that many prospective users of our <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion service may not have had much exposure to computers or<br />

even are computerphobic, we anticipate that they will experience problems f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g relevant <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion. This<br />

might discourage them from us<strong>in</strong>g the WWW.<br />

In order to avoid such problems, the <strong>in</strong><strong>format</strong>ion service has to be user-friendly and efficient: Our system<br />

presents data <strong>in</strong> a structured way, based on the users’ cognitive model. An efficient search facility assists the<br />

user <strong>in</strong> navigat<strong>in</strong>g through the web-site. Human-Computer Interaction techniques have been employed to easeof-use.<br />

This lead to the construction of graphical user <strong>in</strong>terfaces. These measures will elim<strong>in</strong>ate the potential<br />

for frustration the novice user might experience.

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