Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools

In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings

Individual Differences in Cyber Security

A survey of IT professionals suggested that despite technological advancement and organizational procedures to prevent cyber-attacks, users are still the weakest link in cyber security (Crossler, 2013). This suggests it is important to discover what individual differences may cause a user to be more or less vulnerable to cyber security threats. Cyber security knowledge has been shown to lead to increased learning and proactive cyber security behavior (CSB). Self-efficacy has been shown to be a strong predictor of a user’s intended behavior. Traits such as neuroticism have been shown to negatively influence cyber security knowledge and self-efficacy, which may hinder CSB. In discovering what individual traits may predict CSB, users and designers may be able to implement solutions to improve CSB. In this study, 183 undergraduate students at San José State University completed an online survey. Students completed surveys of self-efficacy in information security, and cyber security behavioral intention, as well as a personality inventory and a semantic cyber security knowledge quiz. Correlational analyses were conducted to test hypotheses related to individual traits expected to predict CSB. Results included a negative relationship between neuroticism and self-efficacy and a positive relationship between self-efficacy and CSB. Overall, the results support the conclusion that individual differences can predict self-efficacy and intention to engage in CSB. Future research is needed to investigate whether CSB is influenced by traits such as neuroticism, if CSB can be improved through video games, and which are the causal directions of these effects

Typical Phone Use Habits: Intense Use Does Not Predict Negative Well-Being

Not all smartphone owners use their device in the same way. In this work, we uncover broad, latent patterns of mobile phone use behavior. We conducted a study where, via a dedicated logging app, we collected daily mobile phone activity data from a sample of 340 participants for a period of four weeks. Through an unsupervised learning approach and a methodologically rigorous analysis, we reveal five generic phone use profiles which describe at least 10% of the participants each: limited use, business use, power use, and personality- & externally induced problematic use. We provide evidence that intense mobile phone use alone does not predict negative well-being. Instead, our approach automatically revealed two groups with tendencies for lower well-being, which are characterized by nightly phone use sessions.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, conference pape

Factors Influencing Perceptions Toward Social Networking Websites in China

Based on an online national survey of 503 respondents, this study empirically investigates factors influencing perceptions toward social networking websites (SNWs) in China. More specifically, user demographics and media\ud characteristics were examined. While income was found to be a significant predictor of users’ attitude toward SNWs, gender, age, educational level and marital status were insignificant, suggesting that demographic divides may be\ud diminishing when it comes to online social media in China. Both perceived risk and enjoyment were found to have significant positive effects. Managerial implications were discussed

Measuring Online Social Bubbles

Social media have quickly become a prevalent channel to access information, spread ideas, and influence opinions. However, it has been suggested that social and algorithmic filtering may cause exposure to less diverse points of view, and even foster polarization and misinformation. Here we explore and validate this hypothesis quantitatively for the first time, at the collective and individual levels, by mining three massive datasets of web traffic, search logs, and Twitter posts. Our analysis shows that collectively, people access information from a significantly narrower spectrum of sources through social media and email, compared to search. The significance of this finding for individual exposure is revealed by investigating the relationship between the diversity of information sources experienced by users at the collective and individual level. There is a strong correlation between collective and individual diversity, supporting the notion that when we use social media we find ourselves inside "social bubbles". Our results could lead to a deeper understanding of how technology biases our exposure to new information

Constructing Social Systems through Computer-Mediated Communication

The question whether computer-mediated communication can support the formation of genuine social systems is addressed in this paper. Our hypothesis, that technology creates new forms of social systems beyond real-life milieus, includes the idea that the technology itself may influence how social binding emerges within on-line environments. In real-life communities, a precondition for social coherence is the existence of social conventions. By observing interaction in virtual environments, we found the use of a range of social conventions. These results were analyzed to determine how the use and emergence of conventions might be influenced by the technology. One factor contributing to the coherence of on-line social systems, but not the only one, appears to be the degree of social presence mediated by the technology. We suggest that social systems can emerge by computer-mediated communication and are shaped by the media of the specific environment