TRACE Project Draws Funding From Intelligence Agency Contract
Multi-University, Multi-Disciplinary Effort Developing Web App to Enhance Critical Analysis and Creative Thinking
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Nancy McCracken
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Carsten Oesterlund
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Jennifer StromerGalley
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project supported by a contract from the CREATE (Crowdsourcing Evidence, Reasoning, Argumentation, Thinking and Evaluation) program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an arm of the Office for the Director of National Intelligence, is underway at the iSchool’s Center for Computational Data Sciences research hub. Multi-disciplinary in orientation and multidimensional in focus, the project involves a number of principal investigators with diverse specialties based in several universities around the U.S. Also participating is the Syracuse-based not-for-profit research and development company, SRC, Inc. Called TRACE (Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for Collaboration and Evaluation), the project aims to improve reasoning and intelligence analysis through the development of a web-based application that leverages the use of structured techniques, crowdsourcing and smart nudging to enhance analysts’ problem-solving abilities and foster creative thinking. Work builds on a careful analysis of the weaknesses of current approaches and varied ways to enhance critical decision-making. It is led by iSchool Professor Jennifer StromerGalley, who is joined by a team of principal investigators and a number of researchers, practitioners and graduate students with unique abilities and expertise. Their disciplines include human-computer interaction, deliberation, crowdsourcing, game and experimental design, interface and software design, cognitive and decision sciences and computational techniques. For its first phase, the project is worth $5,215,441 in funding, $1 million of which was awarded in 2017.
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GOALS: ENHANCE REASONING AND COMMUNICATION Researchers are investigating the role of several techniques for enhancing reasoning while also promoting better communication and discussion among work groups. Their aim is to improve the division of labor and reduce typical communication and interaction errors in order to help intelligence analysts accurately and efficiently reason through complex tasks to produce clear, well-supported intelligence products. Game-based principles of human-computer interaction are being applied to create an engaging and intuitive solution that promotes efficiency, accuracy and clarity in analysis. The TRACE system also uses background software processes (such as machine learning, simple decision trees, and advanced natural language processing) and it adopts responsive and just-in-time mechanisms. “Our goal is to create a reasoning and reporting application that is not only effective but also appealing to users by making the process intriguing and fun while not interfering with their natural
