AIApr 11, 2023
Human-AI Co-Creation Approach to Find Forever Chemicals ReplacementsJuliana Jansen Ferreira, Vinícius Segura, Joana G. R. Souza et al.
Generative models are a powerful tool in AI for material discovery. We are designing a software framework that supports a human-AI co-creation process to accelerate finding replacements for the ``forever chemicals''-- chemicals that enable our modern lives, but are harmful to the environment and the human health. Our approach combines AI capabilities with the domain-specific tacit knowledge of subject matter experts to accelerate the material discovery. Our co-creation process starts with the interaction between the subject matter experts and a generative model that can generate new molecule designs. In this position paper, we discuss our hypothesis that these subject matter experts can benefit from a more iterative interaction with the generative model, asking for smaller samples and ``guiding'' the exploration of the discovery space with their knowledge.
HCSep 24, 2025
How People Manage Knowledge in their "Second Brains"- A Case Study with Industry Researchers Using ObsidianJuliana Jansen Ferreira, Vinícius Segura, Joana Gabriela Souza et al.
People face overwhelming information during work activities, necessitating effective organization and management strategies. Even in personal lives, individuals must keep, annotate, organize, and retrieve knowledge from daily routines. The collection of records for future reference is known as a personal knowledge base. Note-taking applications are valuable tools for building and maintaining these bases, often called a ''second brain''. This paper presents a case study on how people build and explore personal knowledge bases for various purposes. We selected the note-taking tool Obsidian and researchers from a Brazilian lab for an in-depth investigation. Our investigation reveals interesting findings about how researchers build and explore their personal knowledge bases. A key finding is that participants' knowledge retrieval strategy influences how they build and maintain their content. We suggest potential features for an AI system to support this process.
HCJan 31, 2024
Making Sense of Knowledge Intensive Processes: an Oil & Gas Industry ScenarioJuliana Jansen Ferreira, Vinícius Segura, Ana Fucs et al.
Sensemaking is a constant and ongoing process by which people associate meaning to experiences. It can be an individual process, known as abduction, or a group process by which people give meaning to collective experiences. The sensemaking of a group is influenced by the abduction process of each person about the experience. Every collaborative process needs some level of sensemaking to show results. For a knowledge intensive process, sensemaking is central and related to most of its tasks. We present findings from a fieldwork executed in knowledge intensive process from the Oil and Gas industry. Our findings indicated that different types of knowledge can be combined to compose the result of a sensemaking process (e.g. decision, the need for more discussion, etc.). This paper presents an initial set of knowledge types that can be combined to compose the result of the sensemaking of a collaborative decision making process. We also discuss ideas for using systems powered by Artificial Intelligence to support sensemaking processes.