6. User Communication

Abstract

The ultimate goal of experience management is to achieve a communication of experience between an experience provider and an experience user. Although both, the experience provider and the experience user are usually humans, the communication between them is achieved through an experience management system, which allows bridging time and space frontiers between the two communication partners and to overcome the availability and capacity problems of the experience provider. As a consequence, the computer is inserted into this communication channel, which causes two new communication channels:

• •the communication of the experience provider with the experience management system and

• •the communication of the experience user with the experience management system.

The first communication channel requires much more effort than the second; the development and maintenance methodology of the experience management model (see Chap. 9) deals with this communication and is not within the scope of this chapter. This chapter addresses the second communication channel. This communication is of bidirectional nature: The user must be able to tell the experience management system about his problem and the experience management system must be able to communicate appropriate experience to the experience user. The difficulties involved here are to organize this communication efficiently and to enable access from several experience users at a time.