The Subjective Project Classification Principle

This chapter presents the subjective project classification principle which states that all information items related to the same project should be stored together regardless of their technological format. A study shows that users tend to think about their information items as projects. They simultaneously retrieve information items of different formats when working on the same project and store files of different formats together according to projects when the system design allows them to. However, current system designs discourage users from storing emails and Web favorites with files, so people currently store them in separate folder hierarchies leading to project fragmentation. Following the subjective project principle the chapter addresses fragmentation by proposing a single hierarchy solution in which all project-related information items are stored in the same folder hierarchy regardless of their format, so that files, emails, Web favorites, tasks and contacts are stored together, separated by tabs.

The Group Management Alternative

People who are collaborating can share and organize files in two main ways: performing Group Information Management (GIM) using a common repository or performing Personal Information Management (PIM) by distributing files as e-mail attachments and storing them in personal repositories. One potential benefit for GIM is that it reduces the need for every collaborating participant to individually organize their information. However people are less successful and less efficient at finding files from common repositories than personal folders. Consistent with this, people show a preference for more traditional methods of file-sharing using email. PIM may induce better retrieval because it encourages people to actively organize their files using personal classifications. Such active personal organization is less likely with GIM.

Summary

In the previous parts of the book, we argued that PIM is a different sort of game from other information management fields. In this part, we focused on the ways that new designs might help users play this game more effectively. We introduced the user-subjective design approach and its three principles, demonstrating the use of subjective attributes with nine design schemes. In most cases, we presented system deployments and their evaluations as evidence for the effectiveness of both the specific design and the user-subjective design principles more generally. Support for the approach is twofold: First, our initial research (...

The User-Subjective Approach

This chapter suggests a new design approach developed specifically for PIM systems. It argues that PIM is unique in that the person who curates the information is the same person who later retrieves it. The user-subjective approach takes advantage of this unique feature and suggests that PIM systems should make systematic use of subjective (user-dependent) attributes. The approach identifies three specific subjective attributes – the importance of the information item to the user, the project to which it belongs, and the context in which the item is used, and suggests three design principles, one for each subjective attribute.

Summary

We began by arguing that prevailing intuitions about information behaviors are inaccurate (chapter 1). People are not exclusively consumers of new public information. Instead, their information behaviors often involve curation, in which they keep and manage valued personal information for future access. Curation can be viewed as a form of ...

Keeping

People can’t save personal copies of every single piece of information that they encounter so they have to actively decide what information to keep. Keeping is challenging because it requires people to predict their future information needs when those needs may change over time. Because predicting information needs is difficult, people tend to overkeep; they retain low-value information that clutters their archives, making it hard to retrieve important information. Keeping is affected by information type, with email and paper archives largely being retained, in contrast to contacts and web information. People are also generally unaware that overkeeping unimportant information makes it more difficult to retrieve valuable information.

Why Is Navigation the Preferred PIM Retrieval Method?

This chapter explores fundamental reasons for navigation preference. It explores cognitive and neuroscience explanations about why navigation is preferred to search. Two studies reveal that navigation is less cognitively demanding than search. The first uses a cognitive psychology technique, the dual-task paradigm, to show that search requires more verbal attention than navigation. The second study indicates that PIM navigation involves primitive brain structures previously observed during real-world navigation. In contrast, search activates brain areas commonly observed in linguistic processing. These deep-rooted neurological biases may promote automatic activation of location-related retrieval, leaving the language system available for other tasks.

The Search Alternative

The two main retrieval strategies for accessing personal information are navigation and search. Critics of navigation point out that information is hidden from sight in folders that are often within other folders; so people have to remember the exact location of information in order to access it. Despite these arguments, several studies show that search is not the main way that people actually access their files. Instead people generally prefer to manually navigate to information rather than using desktop search. This preference is independent of the quality of the search engine used, and improved search engines do not reduce the extent to which people actively organize their information. Except when finding new web information, people use search only as a last resort when accessing personal files.

Conclusions and Future Directions

The final chapter describes future research and technology for curation. Personal archives will continue to grow as new types of personal data and systems play even greater roles in our everyday lives. As a result, we believe that users will confront even greater challenges of organizing their personal information. The chapter first assesses emerging technology, including lifelogging and machine learning, as well as automatic organization of personal information. It outlines requirements for new PIM theory and new methods.

The Subjective Importance Principle

The subjective importance principle states that importance should determine the visual salience and accessibility of information. It is divided into two sub-principles: The Promotion Principle proposes that very important items should be highly visible and accessible as they are more likely to be retrieved. The Demotion Principle proposes that items of lower importance should be made less visible so as not to distract the user, but kept in their original context. This chapter describes the demotion principle. The chapter presents three designs which were developed and positively evaluated: GrayArea in which users can manually demote unimportant information items to a gray area at the bottom of the folder; DMTR which automatically demotes infrequently used mobile phone contacts; and Old'nGray that automatically demotes old versions of documents, so that users can spot the newest version at a glance.