Personal Information ManagementCaleb Amesi385QOctober 13th, 2005First, the applications...What do PIMs look like?Elements of personal information management•Email•Files•Bookmarks•To-do lists•Calendars•Contact listsElements of personal information management•Email•Files•Bookmarks•To-do lists•Calendars•Contact listsThis week’s readings focus on the first three of these.Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?DESKTOP METAPHOR — ARISE!Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?DESKTOP METAPHOR — ARISE!...or rather, what does the organization of physical desks imply for computer-based information management built upon a desktop metaphor?Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?•People organize their desks to remind themselves of things.•Categorizing things is hard, and affects how people organize their documents.TWO MAJOR FINDINGSMalone (1983), How do people organize their desks?•files: things that are explicitly titled and arranged.•piles: things that are like... whatever. They may be unnamed and unarranged.UNITS OF DESK ORGANIZATIONMalone (1983), How do people organize their desks?UNITS OF DESK ORGANIZATION•files: things that are explicitly titled and arranged.•piles: things that are like... whatever. They may be unnamed and unarranged.“It may be desirable to incorporate the possibility of untitled piles in computer-based information systems.”Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?Remember, categorizing information is hard. How can computers help?Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?•Overcome physical burdens•avoid the mechanical difficulties of creating classifications•Overcome cognitive burdens•multiple classifications•deferred classification•automatic classificationComputers can help the user toMalone (1983), How do people organize their desks?•Multiple classifications – we’ll see this again... often teamed with information retrieval and called “views” or “aspects”•Deferred classification – store it in a pile on the desktop•Automatic classification – the de facto standard for email, called “sorting”Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?“One can even imagine a system where users search for a document by a kind of simulated time-lapse photography of the history of their electronic desktop. They could ‘rewind’ and ‘fast forward’ the desktop to locate the last time the desired document was on the desk.”We’ll see this again, too.Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?What about the reminding function of the desktop?Malone (1983), How do people organize their desks?Just make a place to dump stuff where it’ll remain in view!What about the reminding function of the desktop?Freeman, Gelernter (1996), Lifestreams: A Storage Model for Personal Data1.The desktop metaphor is weak2.Named files and hierarchical directories are obsoleteFreeman, Gelernter (1996), Lifestreams: A Storage Model for Personal DataThe solution is a time-ordered stream of documents as an underlying storage system, organized by stream filters.These are Lifestreams.Freeman, Gelernter (1996), Lifestreams: A Storage Model for Personal Data1.Storage should be transparent2.Directories are inadequate as an organizing device3.Archiving should be automatic4.The system should provide sophisticated logic for summarizing/compressing/picturing/animating large groups of related documents5.Computers should make “reminding” convenient6.Personal data should be accessible anywhere and compatibility should be automaticThe manifesto:Freeman, Gelernter (1996), Lifestreams: A Storage Model for Personal Data“Time is a natural guide to experience; it is the attribute that comes closest to a universal skeleton-key for stored experience.” Chronological streams provide historical context, a place for present work, and an attractive reminder mechanism, “future creation”.Kaplan et al (1990), Agenda: A personal information managerThis is the program that created the category.What sort of database do you need to manage personal information?Boardman, Sasse, Spence (2002), Life beyond the mailbox: a cross-tool perspective on personal information management Boardman, Sasse (2004), Stuff goes into the computer and doesn’t come out.•They find certain tools are overloaded.•How does a small subset of British scholars organize its information? (they are very sensitive about their organization)•They test WorkspaceMirror, developed because of their observations of “folder overlap.”Jones, Bruce, Dumais (2001), Keeping found things found on the web.•Their study participants tended to not use bookmarks because they had difficulty remembering their context or relevance, or because they are not easily portable.•They preferred to find files based on their location. The participants hated search, and would only use it as a last result.Two points of interest:Any questions or
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