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Sysadmins and the need for verification information

Published: 14 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Traditional usability measures may not be sufficient for some specialized users, such as system administrators. Because of their broad range of responsibilities for highly complex and risky business environments, these users also need tools that are powerful, informative, and credible. To do their work, system administrators need the ability to verify the work they have done. That verification comes from accurate and available information that we refer to as information credibility. This exploratory research aims to address the relationship between task complexity, task risk, and verification information seeking in GUI tools used by system administrators. Potential antecedents of information verification are identified and a model is proposed that addresses how aspects of the task and environment affect the need for verification. Findings suggest that task complexity is a significant indicator of the need for verification information. Armed with this knowledge, practitioners can anticipate the needs of system administrators and design GUI tools with information credibility in mind.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHiMiT '08: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
November 2008
82 pages
ISBN:9781605583556
DOI:10.1145/1477973
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 14 November 2008

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Author Tags

  1. information seeking
  2. system administrator
  3. usability
  4. verification

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  • (2016)Service analytics for IT service managementIBM Journal of Research and Development10.1147/JRD.2016.252062060:2-3(13:1-13:17)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
  • (2014)Heuristics for Evaluating IT Security Management ToolsHuman-Computer Interaction10.1080/07370024.2013.81919829:4(311-350)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2014
  • (2011)Knowledge and information and needs of system administrators in IT service factoriesProceedings of the 10th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems and the 5th Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.5555/2254436.2254453(81-90)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2011
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  • (2011)Information needs of system administrators in information technology service factoriesProceedings of the 5th ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology10.1145/2076444.2076447(1-10)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2011
  • (2009)Scripting practices in complex systems managementProceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology10.1145/1641587.1641589(9-18)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2009
  • (2009)System administrators as broker techniciansProceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology10.1145/1641587.1641588(1-8)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2009

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