The SwissCast information push service

1. The SwissCast information push service A multidisciplinary research, a multifaceted experience Riccardo Mazza USI - Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Università della Svizzera Italiana Lugano - Switzerland e-mail: riccardo.mazza@lu.unisi.ch

2. Overview • Introduction • A brief presentation of the SwissCast project • Implementation of the service • Next steps & conclusion

3. Project Goals • Gathering and delivering information using Internet as communication medium • Analyzing the communication needs for information providers and users • Integrating existing technologies • Developing a stable and functional prototype as a basis for further studies • Designing a user-oriented graphical interface • Testing and assessing the application with selected groups of users

4. Main competencies involved True interdisciplinary research team • Communication theory specialist • Task: analysis of information providers’ and users’ communicational needs, in order to offer only relevant communication • Visual communication specialist • Task: design user-oriented graphical interface • Information technologies expert • Task: implement the application • Information system manager • Task: run the application

5. Definition of push service: push is the automatic delivery of information to user’s desktop; content is organised by topic defined by a publisher and users receive information according to their own pre-defined profile. Push service carried out by a third part Information brokerage service Use push service as an information brokerage service

6. Information brokerage activities • Defining the application area • Defining who are the target users (and their needs) • Selecting reliable information sources • Classifying, filtering and editing information, accordingly to a suitable classification scheme and layout • Delivering personalised information according to users profiles • Notifying users if new content is available

7. Overview • Introduction • A brief presentation of the SwissCast project • Implementation of the service • Next steps & conclusion

8. Project’s details • Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) - Swiss Priority Program (SPP) Information and Communications Structures • Organisations involved: • University of Svizzera Italiana - Faculty of Communication Sciences - Lugano (Switzerland) • University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland - Lugano • Ongoing project: Start date: October 1st 1997 / end date: March 31st 2000 • Project heads • Prof. Maurizio Decina (USI) - Requérant Principal • Prof. Eddo Rigotti (USI) - Corequérant • Dr. Fiorenzo Scaroni (SUP) - Corequérant

9. Two application areas • Research Area project partner: • R&D University Office (USI/SUPSI) • Pharmaceutical Area project partners: • VIA Marketing & Promotion S.A. - Lugano • Pfizer AG - Zurich • other 2 minor pharmaceutical company based in Ticino canton of Switzerland

10. Overview • Introduction • A brief presentation of the SwissCast project • Implementation of the service • Next steps & conclusion

11. Implementation SwissCast is an application with three components: 1 - information gathering 2 - classification 3 - delivering/casting

12. Active Providers Passive Providers Information gathering Information can be inserted into SwissCast using 3 modalities: • Inserted directly by providers via web forms with a common web browser • Gathered by a set of agent from: • databases accessed via Telnet (EU-Cordis - CCL version) • gateways from remote corporate databases (Actamed DB) • From WWW pages resources harvested using a web robot

13. Classification • Semantic mapping of available information, accordingly to a keyword scheme. This is done: • manually by Active information providers, when they insert new information items • automatically, using a semantic conversion map, for corporate databases • manually by an editorial board, for the resources harvested from WWW • IMPORTANT ISSUE: In doing it, human expertise can be helped by automatic tools, but never substituted

14. Classification schema adopted • Research Area • Subject Classification Code by Cordis (EU R&D Information Service) • Pharmaceutical Area • MSH - Medical Subject Headings by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. • The same classification schema is used both for documents and profiles • Matching documents against users’ profiles, done using boolean operators working on the keyword schema

15. Delivery • Notification via E-mail message (push method) • list of matched document • Personal Web page (pull method) • read document through a common Web browser

16. Personalised information dissemination • Each user has a set of ‘static’ profiles, describing his own interests • Three main customisation items: • subject related (e.g. programming languages, research founding info, etc.) • type related (event, news, grant, tender) • time related (notification frequency: day, week, …) • Combination of push (e-mail) and pull (personal Web pages) technologies • Search archive facilities (fulltext, class)

17. User interface • Interaction with the system completely web-based, including service’s management & document input • Main features: • easy to use for novice users • strong and effective visual presence • doesn’t need special hardware requirements (no Java, DHTM, etc.) • poor in graphics element, in order to speed up the downloading process • contextual on-line help

18. What’s currently on-line • Full functional prototype, already used in the field of research information delivering • http://swisscast.ti-edu.ch:8002/ • Under testing in the field of pharmaceutical information • http://swisscast.ti-edu.ch:8001/

19. Assessment • Ongoing project: the test phase started in June ’99 which currently involves 70 different professional users • First impressions by users (to be confirmed by assessment results): • the service gives useful information for their activities • found relevant documents for their profiles • very easy to use • In the near future: • having a semi-structured interview with a representative sample of end users via an electronic form or via a personal interview

20. Overview • Introduction • A brief presentation of the SwissCast project • Implementation of the service • Next steps & conclusion

21. Next steps • Assessment activities • For the broker: study of smart technologies to help the service manager • automatic pre-classification of information (currently the major bottleneck) • automatic text summarization • ... • For the user: study of ‘dynamic’ user profiles • relevance feedback • automatic ranking • … • Multi-language support

22. Some (provisory) results • Push service works well only for specific information needs • For classification activities, human expertise can be helped by automatic tools, but never substituted • Technological tools are essential, but can not work without communicational and visual competencies • Professionals needs certification and reliability of information sources • User interfaces as easy as possible

23. Conclusion • Developed a stable and functional prototype actively used by researcher • Good impression by users • Communicational theories and studies applied to a real application • Prototype ready for further studies • Test bed for a true interdisciplinary research team

24. More info and access to the service • Project Website http://swisscast.ti-edu.ch/ • E-mail (help, info, questions, …) webmaster@swisscast.ti-edu.ch • Access to the service - Research area http://swisscast.ti-edu.ch:8002/ • Access to the service - Pharmaceutical area http://swisscast.ti-edu.ch:8001/