Towards a Network-Based Design Framework for Knowledge Systems

Although many explicit and implicit knowledge networks govern the reality in today's organizations, these networks are often not visibly supported in many common software tools. By reducing the concept of networks to its fundamentals, their construction from nodes and vertices, we seek to uncover possible ways in which actors can interact with generic networks. We propose a framework, which discusses a number of possible interactions. Manipulation, sensing and sharing parts of the network are proposed as fundamental basic interactions. These basic interactions can result in higher order interactions such as network composition, which allows the creation of new parts of the network by recombining already existing parts. We explore how this framework can be applied to interactions with information in popular software products. We argue that many software products support the interactions set forth by the framework. However, few solutions support all interactions in an integrated fashion while still being intuitive and easy to use. We have begun the development of a software system, which aspires to be both easy to use and supporting the full range of network-based interactions. First experiences from development and use of this system are briefly described.