personal information management

Personal Information ManagementPersonal Information Management

• What’s on your PIM?• Readings review

What’s on your PIM?What’s on your PIM?- Contact info

• Phone• Fax• Email• Address(es)

- To Do- Meetings- Lists- Reminders- Email- Documents

• Music• Video• Text• Other formats

All your PIM are belong to usAll your PIM are belong to us

• Connections?- How are the bits interlinked?- How do they get into the PIM?

• All in one place?- Is centralized necessarily better?

• Client or Server approach?

Life beyond the mailboxLife beyond the mailbox

• Email isn’t the only way to organize your schedule or information

• What if it were the only way?• One interface isn’t enough. Modes.• Email is the first thing we think of when trying

to solve a communication or organization problem- Victim of its own success- Failure at its own aims

Reference tasks with multiple toolsReference tasks with multiple tools

• How to organize information- Folders- Time- Person- Project- User-defined

• Reminders- Notification- Completion- Tracking

• Towards an Activity Space

Users constrained by PIMsUsers constrained by PIMs

• One application for everything• Too much or too little compartmentalization• How do users organize docs, email, &

bookmarks?• Folders, unfiled items, lost items?• High volume challenges• Folder overlap – role, project, interest• Why not aliases?

• Users feel untidy?• UI & functionality across tools• Activity sequence among tools

PIM FeaturesPIM Features

• Integrating even more into email?- Focal points of activity- Easiest to notice changes?

• Workspace Mirror- The categories problem- Too much flexibility?

• Context dependent tools- How do you note context?- Can the system determine context?

• Project Management as overall activity

LifestreamsLifestreams

• Is the desktop metaphor broken?- Complexity of (multiple) applications- Modality of tasks & file formats

• Documents organized by time- What are documents?• Subsets interlinked• PIM-like information

- Another kind of paper?

• Stream filters- Organize, locate, summarize & monitor incoming

information- What about already present information?

Lifestreams IdeasLifestreams Ideas

• Storage should be transparent• Directories are bad for organizing• Automatic archiving• Grouping documents• Reminding convenience (UI integration)• Personal data should be available- Viewports on network- Device independent

• Compatibility ease

Lifestreams modelLifestreams model

• New, clone, transfer, find & summarize• Directories on demand• (Complex) Ad hoc queries• Dynamic substreams – automatic, continuous

organization• Summarization by substream – bundling• Document lifetime past, present, future (to do)

ScopewareScopeware

Info Archiving with BookmarksInfo Archiving with Bookmarks

• Small, Older Study- 50 Bookmarkers- 300+ Web Users

• How People Create, Use and Organize Bookmarks• Bookmarks Are One Method to Make Sense of the

Web- Supporting Searching- Supporting Browsing

• Help with Mental Model of the Web• A “Personal Web Information Space”

Abrams, Baecker & Chignell (1998)

Info Archiving with Bookmarks (2)Info Archiving with Bookmarks (2)

• Why Bookmarks?- Frequently Used Pointers• Easy to Make• Easy to Use

- Archives• Topics of Interests• Aging Interests (forever)• Paths Through the Web (over time)

• What Bookmarks?- Distinct Domain Names- Index or Search Engines- Front/Main (News) Pages


• Methods for Organizing Bookmarks- None- Ordered List (re-arranged)- Sets & Folders- Hierarchy (Nested Folders)- External Web Page(s)- Other System(s)

• More Bookmarks Require More Organization Methods

Info Archiving with Bookmarks (4)Info Archiving with Bookmarks (4)• Bookmark Filing Strategies

- None – Never – Natural Order- At Creation Time• Folders• Labels

- At End of Browsing Session• More Folders• More Time

- When Bookmark Sets Become Unwieldy• Randomly• Scheduled

• Archival Use- 100 Day Median- About Half Visited in the Last Three Months- Almost All Within the Last Year


• Organizing Bookmarks- Only When Necessary- Tradeoff Against Not Finding a Bookmark

• Finding Bookmarks- Names of Bookmarks Not Always Descriptive- Folders Difficult to Navigate- Remembering Bookmark Location Challenging- Recalling Exact Bookmark Name Unlikely


• How to Enable & Expand Bookmarking Functions?- Taxonomy-Classification- Automatic Bookmarking- Agents

• “My” Web (Site – Nav Bar)• Bookmarking As Poaching• Sharing With Others (email)• Should We Bookmark at All?

- Search Engines Are More Efficient- Web Use History (if extended) Show Prior Accesses- Interfaces Don’t Scale for Volume

• Implications for IA?

How do people organize their desks?How do people organize their desks?

• Does everyone organize differently?- Their desks?- Their computers?

• Organization extremes- Files, forms & paperflow- Piles as archives

• Time to organize vs access time• Reminding, not just finding- In sight, in mind- Location ca be a cue to time

• Categorization is difficult for everyone- Leaving things out to not classify

Find and RemindFind and Remind

• Classification- Automatic- Format forced- Multiple- Deferred

• Notification- Frequency of task- Priority of task- Size and importance- Color, format, labels for differences and notice

Keeping found things foundKeeping found things found

• Managing information for re-use• Finding things again vs. re-searching• How many ways can we work around PIM?• Focus on Email and titles from the Web• Using browsers and email clients• Portability, access points, persistence• Currency and reminding frequency• Users were constrained by tool functionality- Too much flexibility?- Too many tools?

How they did itHow they did it

Agenda & the history of PIMsAgenda & the history of PIMs

• First and foremost?• Good, bad and definitely ugly• Foundation for Notes• What about Magellan?• Free form too free?

PIM HarmonyPIM Harmony

• Integration among tools- Formats- Importing and Exporting

• Integration for tasks- Sequences- Automation

• Integration among users- Shared contacts, bookmarks, lists, filters- Common formats or meta information