Personal Information Management

2. Personal Information Management • What’s on your PIM? • Readings review

3. What’s on your PIM? • Contact info • Phone • Fax • Email • Address(es) • To Do • Meetings • Lists • Reminders • Email • Documents • Music • Video • Text • Other formats

4. All 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?

5. Life 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

6. Reference tasks with multiple tools • How to organize information • Folders • Time • Person • Project • User-defined • Reminders • Notification • Completion • Tracking • Towards an Activity Space

7. Users 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

8. PIM 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

9. Lifestreams • 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?

10. Lifestreams 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

11. Lifestreams 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)

12. Scopeware

13. Info 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)

14. 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

15. Info Archiving with Bookmarks (3) • 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

16. 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

17. Info Archiving with Bookmarks (5) • 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

18. Info Archiving with Bookmarks (6) • 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?

19. 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

20. Find 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

21. Keeping 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?

22. How they did it

23. Agenda & the history of PIMs • First and foremost? • Good, bad and definitely ugly • Foundation for Notes • What about Magellan? • Free form too free?

24. PIM 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