Designing a Knowledge Management System for Distributed Activities: A Human Centered Approach

In this study we use the principles of distributed cognition and the methodology of human-centered distributed information design to analyze a complex distributed human-computer system, identify its problems, and generate design requirements and implementation specifications of a replacement prototype for effective organizational memory and knowledge management. We argue that a distributed human-computer information system has unique properties, structures and processes that are best described in the language of distributed cognition. Distributed cognition provides researchers a richer theoretical understanding of human-computer interactions and enables re-searchers to capture the phenomenon that emerges in social interactions as well as the interactions between people and structures in their environment.