A Q&A System Considering Employees´ Willingness to Help Colleagues and to Look for Help in Different Workplace-Related Situations: An Analysis in the Automotive Sector

Learning at the workplace is quite often based on sharing of experiences between workers. In this paper we present the results of a survey we made about the worker´s willingness to help colleagues and about the prerequisites for the use of a question and answering (Q&A) system supporting mobile users in the automotive sector. Especially we investigate whether the willingness to help and the information need differs in different work related activities. A Q&A system is a widespread used tool to pass experience based knowledge between persons distributed over different locations. The analysis of the survey shows that help from colleagues is valuable during the knowledge acquisition process. We also get answers on what kind of information is helpful for technicians in the automotive sector. These insights have been incorporated into our concept and implementation. Our concept extends the fundamental Q&A idea to be used in automotive companies where especially strong requirements regarding the response time exist and where technicians work at different places and need mobile support.