Dealing with Information Overload in Multifaceted Personal Informatics Systems

Personal informatics systems are tools that capture, aggregate, and analyze data from distinct facets of their users’ lives. This article adopts a mixed-methods approach to understand the problem of information overload in personal informatics systems. We report findings from a 3-month study in which 20 participants collected multifaceted personal tracking data and used a system called Exist to reveal statistical correlations within their data. We explore the challenges that participants faced in reviewing the information presented by Exist, and we identify characteristics that exemplify “interesting” correlations. Based on these findings, we develop automated filtering mechanisms that aim to prevent information overload and support users in extracting interesting insights. Our approach deals with information overload by reducing the number of correlations shown to users by about 55% on average and increases the percentage of displayed correlations rated as interesting to about 81%, representing a 34 percentage point improvement over filters that only consider statistical significance at p &lt;.05. We demonstrate how this curation can be achieved using objective data harvested by the system, including the use of Google Trends data as a proxy for subjective user interest.</p

Information Overload: An Overview

For almost as long as there has been recorded information, there has been a perception that humanity has been overloaded by it. Concerns about 'too much to read' have been expressed for many centuries, and made more urgent since the arrival of ubiquitous digital information in the late twentieth century. The historical perspective is a necessary corrective to the often, and wrongly, held view that it is associated solely with the modern digital information environment, and with social media in particular. However, as society fully experiences Floridi's Fourth Revolution, and moves into hyper-history (with society dependent on, and defined by, information and communication technologies) and the infosphere (a information environment distinguished by a seamless blend of online and offline information actvity), individuals and societies are dependent on, and formed by, information in an unprecedented way, information overload needs to be taken more seriously than ever. Overload has been claimed to be both the major issue of our time, and a complete non-issue. It has been cited as an important factor in, inter alia, science, medicine, education, politics, governance, business and marketing, planning for smart cities, access to news, personal data tracking, home life, use of social media, and online shopping, and has even influenced literature The information overload phenomenon has been known by many different names, including: information overabundance, infobesity, infoglut, data smog, information pollution, information fatigue, social media fatigue, social media overload, information anxiety, library anxiety, infostress, infoxication, reading overload, communication overload, cognitive overload, information violence, and information assault. There is no single generally accepted definition, but it can best be understood as that situation which arises when there is so much relevant and potentially useful information available that it becomes a hindrance rather than a help. Its essential nature has not changed with changing technology, though its causes and proposed solutions have changed much. The best ways of avoiding overload, individually and socially, appear to lie in a variety of coping strategies, such as filtering, withdrawing, queuing, and 'satisficing'. Better design of information systems, effective personal information management, and the promotion of digital and media literacies, also have a part to play. Overload may perhaps best be overcome by seeking a mindful balance in consuming information, and in finding understanding

Social and interactional practices for disseminating current awareness information in an organisational setting.

Current awareness services are designed to keep users informed about recent developments based around user need profiles. In organisational settings, they may operate through both electronic and social interactions aimed at delivering information that is relevant, pertinent and current. Understanding these interactions can reveal the tensions in current awareness dissemination and help inform ways of making services more effective and efficient. We report an in-depth, observational study of electronic current awareness use within a large London law firm. The study found that selection, re-aggregation and forwarding of information by multiple actors gives rise to a complex sociotechnical distribution network. Knowledge management staff act as a layer of “intelligent filters” sensitive to complex, local information needs; their distribution decisions address multiple situational relevance factors in a situation fraught with information overload and restrictive time-pressures. Their decisions aim to optimise conflicting constraints of recall, precision and information quantity. Critical to this is the use of dynamic profile updates which propagate back through the network through formal and informal social interactions. This supports changes to situational relevance judgements and so allows the network to ‘self-tune’. These findings lead to design requirements, including that systems should support rapid assessment of information items against an individual’s interests; that it should be possible to organise information for different subsequent uses; and that there should be back-propagation from information consumers to providers, to tune the understanding of their information needs

Supporting dynamic and distributed decision making in acute care environments: Insights from a cognitive ethnography

The way that medical decisions are carried out in hospital environments has undergone radical changes in recent years, in part as a result of the changing landscape of care. To make decisions, physicians are expected to keep abreast of a growing and changing body of medical and patient knowledge, collaborate more with clinical colleagues, and utilize more technologies to inform care than ever before. This dissertation reports on a five month cognitive ethnography in an ICU in Ontario Canada, and utilizes distributed cognition to understand the challenges that physicians face in making decision in modern acute care environments. It also seeks to elucidate the strategies used by ICU physicians to cope with the challenges associated with using information from social, material and technological sources in decision-making. My findings demonstrate how information resources are (1) Objectivist, in that too much attention is paid to supporting the formalized, outcome-centered aspects of medical thinking, without due regard to the processes involved in adapting decisions to their situation; (2) Fragmented, in that, while information resources are often well-designed when considered in isolation, they force physicians to bridge gaps in the logic of access or representation when working between resources; (3) Individualistic, in that information resources are often tailored to support the cognitive needs of individual physicians, leaving the cognitive needs associated with collaboration unsupported, and sometimes undermining them. To compensate for the challenges associated with using objectivist, fragmented and individualistic information resources, physicians employed a number techniques, including relying in paper and other flexible artifacts, interpersonal clinical communications, and engaging in mobility work. This research brings us a step closer to understanding how people, paper, and technologies function together to fulfill the complex and dynamic needs associated with making medical decisions

Improving the Quality of Electronic Documentation in Critical Care Nursing

Electronic nursing documentation systems can facilitate complete, accurate, timely documentation practices, but without effective policies and procedures in place, a gap in practice exists and quality of care may be impacted. This systematic review of literature examined current evidence regarding electronic nursing documentation quality. General systems theory and the Donabedian model of health care quality provided the framework for the project. Electronic databases PubMed and the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health were searched for articles addressing electronic nursing documentation practices. The Cochrane systematic review methodology was used to analyze the articles. Articles were excluded if published before 2001 or not in the English language. The search revealed 860 articles of which 35 were included in the final review. Most studies were quasi-experimental involving multiple interventions such as clinical decision support (CDSS), education, and audit and feedback specific documentation foci. The most reported outcomes were an improvement in documentation completeness and correctness. A multifaceted intervention strategy consisting of CDSS, education, and audit and feedback can be used to improve electronic documentation completeness and correctness. Policies and procedures regarding documentation practice should support the intended outcomes. Electronic documentation systems can improve completeness, but care should be taken not to depend on the quantity of documentation alone. Further research may shed light on the importance of concordance or plausibility, and the truth of documentation and ultimately how that can impact social determinates of health and social change

Selecting, avoiding, disconnecting: a focus group study of people’s strategies for dealing with information abundance in the contexts of news, entertainment, and personal communication

Information abundance has become a defining characteristic of digital media environments. Today, people have to deal with a vast amount of news, entertainment and personal communication. This study investigates the strategies that people use to do so. Conceptually, we propose to understand information abundance as a macro-level phenomenon, i.e., an external state, which is neither positive nor negative per se. However, it may be experienced differently by individuals depending on what strategies they have to navigate abundance. Information abundance can be observed at the levels of content, sources, and devices as well as across the different media contexts of news, entertainment, or personal communication. Empirically, we conduct focus group discussions with 40 participants from Switzerland and examine what strategies people use to manage or withdraw from information abundance. The findings show that the strategies of selection, avoidance, and disconnection are applied similarly across the three media contexts, both temporarily and habitually, preventively and interventively, and are often used in tandem. Our findings also reveal that all strategies are used at the content, source, and device levels, which is important to consider because avoidance or disconnection from devices can inevitably affect media use more generally. The use of strategies seems to impact how individuals experience abundance, supporting previous research that avoidance and disconnection can mitigate information overload and enhance well-being. The study contributes to a better understanding of the multifaceted application of strategies as individual responses to the increase of information supply and the blurring boundaries between different media contexts

From Information Overload to Knowledge Graphs: An Automatic Information Process Model

Continuously increasing text data such as news, articles, and scientific papers from the Internet have caused the information overload problem. Collecting valuable information as well as coding the information efficiently from enormous amounts of unstructured textual information becomes a big challenge in the information explosion age. Although many solutions and methods have been developed to reduce information overload, such as the deduction of duplicated information, the adoption of personal information management strategies, and so on, most of the existing methods only partially solve the problem. What’s more, many existing solutions are out of date and not compatible with the rapid development of new modern technology techniques. Thus, an effective and efficient approach with new modern IT (Information Technology) techniques that can collect valuable information and extract high-quality information has become urgent and critical for many researchers in the information overload age. Based on the principles of Design Science Theory, the paper presents a novel approach to tackle information overload issues. The proposed solution is an automated information process model that employs advanced IT techniques such as web scraping, natural language processing, and knowledge graphs. The model can automatically process the full cycle of information flow, from information Search to information Collection, Information Extraction, and Information Visualization, making it a comprehensive and intelligent information process tool. The paper presents the model capability to gather critical information and convert unstructured text data into a structured data model with greater efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, the paper presents multiple use cases to validate the feasibility and practicality of the model. Furthermore, the paper also performed both quantitative and qualitative evaluation processes to assess its effectiveness. The results indicate that the proposed model significantly reduces the information overload and is valuable for both academic and real-world research

The Advent of Digital Productivity Assistants: The Case of Microsoft MyAnalytics

Modern digital work environments allow for great flexibility, but can also contribute to a blurring of work/life boundaries and technostress. An emerging class of intelligent tools, that we term Digital Productivity Assistant (DPA), helps knowledge workers to improve their productivity by creating awareness of their collaboration behaviour and by suggesting improvements. In this revelatory case study, we combine auto-ethnographic insights with interview data from three organisations to explore how one such tool works to influence collaboration and productivity management behaviours, using the lens of persuasive IS design. We also identify barriers to DPAs’ effective use as a partner in personal productivity management

New partnerships for learning: meeting professional information needs

This paper has been prompted by the challenges created by recent proposed reforms to social care services in the UK services which are being 'modernised', a term ubiquitous in policy documents but difficult to define with confidence. Government modernisation and e-government programmes highlight with renewed urgency the need for social care practitioners on the front line to have up-to-date, reliable information. Yet the rise in the rate and volume of information published (over new and old channels) has, paradoxically, made it increasingly difficult for them to keep up with new developments. How can higher education institutions best contribute to the social care community through a period of profound ideological and structural change? In particular, the paper discusses the key challenges of keeping abreast of research; changes in the social/organisational/professional context of social care; how social care practitioners learn; and effectively integrating practice, research and educatio