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Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design.

Attfield, S; Blandford, AE; (2010) Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design. Artificial Intelligence and Law , 18 (4) 387 - 412. 10.1007/s10506-010-9091-y. Green open access

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Abstract

Given the very large numbers of documents involved in e-discovery investigations, lawyers face a considerable challenge of collaborative sensemaking. We report findings from three exploratory workplace studies which looked at different aspects of how this challenge was met. From a sociotechnical perspective, the studies aimed to understand how investigators collectively and individually worked with information to support sensemaking and decision making. Here, we focus on discovery-led refinement; specifically, how engaging with the materials of the investigations led to discoveries that supported refinement of the problems and new strategies for addressing them. These refinements were essential for tractability. We begin with observations which showing how new lines of enquiry were recursively embedded. We then analyse the conceptual structure of a line of enquiry and consider how reflecting this in e-discovery support systems might support scalability and group collaboration. We then focus on the individual activity of manual document review where refinement corresponded with the inductive identification of classes of irrelevant and relevant documents within a collection. Our observations point to the effects of priming on dealing with these efficiently and to issues of cognitive ergonomics at the human-computer interface. We use these observations to consider how visualisations might enable reviewers to deal with such refinements more efficiently.

Type: Article
Title: Discovery-led refinement in e-discovery investigations: sensemaking, cognitive ergonomics and system design.
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/s10506-010-9091-y
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10506-010-9091-y
Language: English
Additional information: The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1344067
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