Planz to Put Our Digital Information in Its Place

Planz provides a single, integrative document-like overlay to a folder hierarchy through the dynamic, ondemand assembly of XML fragments. This overlay provides a context in which to create or reference not only files but also email messages, web pages and informal notes. This paper describes an evaluation of Planz over a period of several days during which participants compared their experiences on two projects – one involving “status quo ” methods, a second project involving Planz. Also discussed is an architecture that extends on the front-end to provide additional overlays and on the back-end in support of additional information stores. Work on Planz is guided by a vision of “structural integrity”: Many tools, many modes of interaction applied to a common structure for the organization of and access to personal information

Enhanced visualisation techniques to support access to personal information across multiple devices

The increasing number of devices owned by a single user makes it increasingly difficult to access, organise and visualise personal information (PI), i.e. documents and media, across these devices. The primary method that is currently used to organise and visualise PI is the hierarchical folder structure, which is a familiar and widely used means to manage PI. However, this hierarchy does not effectively support personal information management (PIM) across multiple devices. Current solutions, such as the Personal Information Dashboard and Stuff I’ve Seen, do not support PIM across multiple devices. Alternative PIM tools, such as Dropbox and TeamViewer, attempt to provide a means of accessing PI across multiple devices, but these solutions also suffer from several limitations. The aim of this research was to investigate to what extent enhanced information visualisation (IV) techniques could be used to support accessing PI across multiple devices. An interview study was conducted to identify how PI is currently managed across multiple devices. This interview study further motivated the need for a tool to support visualising PI across multiple devices and identified requirements for such an IV tool. Several suitable IV techniques were selected and enhanced to support PIM across multiple devices. These techniques comprised an Overview using a nested circles layout, a Tag Cloud and a Partition Layout, which used a novel set-based technique. A prototype, called MyPSI, was designed and implemented incorporating these enhanced IV techniques. The requirements and design of the MyPSI prototype were validated using a conceptual walkthrough. The design of the MyPSI prototype was initially implemented for a desktop or laptop device with mouse-based interaction. A sample personal space of information (PSI) was used to evaluate the prototype in a controlled user study. The user study was used to identify any usability problems with the MyPSI prototype. The results were highly positive and the participants agreed that such a tool could be useful in future. No major problems were identified with the prototype. The MyPSI prototype was then implemented on a mobile device, specifically an Android tablet device, using a similar design, but supporting touch-based interaction. Users were allowed to upload their own PSI using Dropbox, which was visualised by the MyPSI prototype. A field study was conducted following the Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case Studies approach specifically designed for IV evaluation. The field study was conducted over a two-week period, evaluating both the desktop and mobile versions of the MyPSI prototype. Both versions received positive results, but the desktop version was slightly preferred over the mobile version, mainly due to familiarity and problems experienced with the mobile implementation. Design recommendations were derived to inform future designs of IV tools to support accessing PI across multiple devices. This research has shown that IV techniques can be enhanced to effectively support accessing PI across multiple devices. Future work will involve customising the MyPSI prototype for mobile phones and supporting additional platforms

Enhanced visualisation techniques to support access to personal information across multiple devices

The increasing number of devices owned by a single user makes it increasingly difficult to access, organise and visualise personal information (PI), i.e. documents and media, across these devices. The primary method that is currently used to organise and visualise PI is the hierarchical folder structure, which is a familiar and widely used means to manage PI. However, this hierarchy does not effectively support personal information management (PIM) across multiple devices. Current solutions, such as the Personal Information Dashboard and Stuff I’ve Seen, do not support PIM across multiple devices. Alternative PIM tools, such as Dropbox and TeamViewer, attempt to provide a means of accessing PI across multiple devices, but these solutions also suffer from several limitations. The aim of this research was to investigate to what extent enhanced information visualisation (IV) techniques could be used to support accessing PI across multiple devices. An interview study was conducted to identify how PI is currently managed across multiple devices. This interview study further motivated the need for a tool to support visualising PI across multiple devices and identified requirements for such an IV tool. Several suitable IV techniques were selected and enhanced to support PIM across multiple devices. These techniques comprised an Overview using a nested circles layout, a Tag Cloud and a Partition Layout, which used a novel set-based technique. A prototype, called MyPSI, was designed and implemented incorporating these enhanced IV techniques. The requirements and design of the MyPSI prototype were validated using a conceptual walkthrough. The design of the MyPSI prototype was initially implemented for a desktop or laptop device with mouse-based interaction. A sample personal space of information (PSI) was used to evaluate the prototype in a controlled user study. The user study was used to identify any usability problems with the MyPSI prototype. The results were highly positive and the participants agreed that such a tool could be useful in future. No major problems were identified with the prototype. The MyPSI prototype was then implemented on a mobile device, specifically an Android tablet device, using a similar design, but supporting touch-based interaction. Users were allowed to upload their own PSI using Dropbox, which was visualised by the MyPSI prototype. A field study was conducted following the Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case Studies approach specifically designed for IV evaluation. The field study was conducted over a two-week period, evaluating both the desktop and mobile versions of the MyPSI prototype. Both versions received positive results, but the desktop version was slightly preferred over the mobile version, mainly due to familiarity and problems experienced with the mobile implementation. Design recommendations were derived to inform future designs of IV tools to support accessing PI across multiple devices. This research has shown that IV techniques can be enhanced to effectively support accessing PI across multiple devices. Future work will involve customising the MyPSI prototype for mobile phones and supporting additional platforms

Paths to more effective personal information management

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 256-272).With the widespread availability of digital tools for storing, accessing, and sharing information, why is so much information still lost, forgotten, or kept on paper? The work in this thesis finds that such disorganization results from problems in the designs of the personal information management (PIM) tools in common use today. Such problems impede information capture, force many information forms to be left out, and cause information to be forgotten. How can these problems be mitigated? Our Information Scraps study identifies the need to support more diverse kinds of information, while conserving time, attention, and memory for retained information items. Our first approach to achieving these goals is to eliminate the artificial separation and homogeneity that structured PIM tools impose, so that arbitrary information can be captured in any way desired. A two-year study of List-it, our short-note-taking tool, discovers that people keep notes serving 5 primary roles: reminders, reference items, progress trackers, places to think, and archives of personal value. The second reintroduces structured data to support more effective use and management of information collections. Jourknow addresses the manageability of large note collections with lightweight-structured note contents and contextual retrieval, the access of notes by the contexts and activities at the time of creation. Poyozo reinforces recollection of previously seen information, by providing visualizations of all of a person's past information activities. Finally, Atomate addresses the challenge of managing the ever-increasing deluge of new information, by letting people delegate to software behaviors actions to be automatically taken when new information arrives. These studies identify critical needs of PIM tools and offer viable solutions.by Max Goodwin Van Kleek.Ph.D