PhD Defense: Improving tool support for personal information management
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This thesis aims to improve tool support for personal information management (PIM) by developing a better understanding of PIM behavior and needs from a cross-tool perspective. The research objectives are to systematically investigate integration as a design strategy for improving PIM tools through developing cross-tool requirements, designing and implementing a novel integration mechanism, and evaluating its effectiveness. The contributions will include improved knowledge of cross-tool PIM behaviors, a WorkspaceMirror prototype, evaluation results of the prototype, and design and methodological recommendations for developing improved PIM tools.
PhD Defense: Improving tool support for personal information management
- 1. Thesis Overview Improving Tool Support for Personal Information Management Richard Boardman Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London
- 2. Research Area Personal Information Management (PIM) the collection, storage, organization and retrieval of items of digital information (e.g. email, files, appointments, reminders, contacts, bookmarks) by an individual in their personal computing environment (Lansdale, 1988)
- 3. Research Problem Evidence that many people struggle to manage their personal information Design challenge: improve PIM tools But under-researched (Whittaker et al., 2000) Popular design route = PIM-integration Problem 1: Lack of cross-tool requirements Problem 2: Lack of evaluation
- 4. Research Objectives Systematic investigation of integration as a design strategy to improve PIM-tools: Develop increased understanding of PIM behaviour and needs from a cross-tool perspective Design, implement and evaluate a novel PIM-integration mechanism Generate design and methodological recommendations
- 5. User-centered Design Methodology Cross-tool Exploratory Study (Ch 4) Semi-structured interviews Design and implementation (Ch 5) Incremental design approach Cross-tool Main Study (Ch 6) Field Trial: (a) evaluate design and (b) longitudinal study Model development (Ch 4,6,7) Develop models to describe findings
- 6. Contributions 1: Improved Knowledge on PIM Comparison of PIM behaviour between files, email and bookmarks (Ch 4) Improved classifications of organizing strategies (tool-specific and cross-tool) Model of incremental changes in organizing behaviour (Ch 6) cf. Balter 1997 Improvement of Barreau’s PIM model (Ch 7) To reflect cross-tool, supporting, ongoing properties of PIM
- 7. Contributions 2: Design and Evaluation WorkspaceMirror prototype (Ch 5) Novel PIM-integration mechanism, driven by observations of folder overlap in Ch 4 Evaluation results (Ch 5,6) Promise of mirroring for top-level folders Design recommendations (Ch 7) Pros and cons of integration Methodological recommendations (Ch 7) Evaluate PIM designs from tool-specific and cross-tool perspectives