Keeping Found Things Found and other challenges of Personal Information Management

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Keeping Found Things Foundand other challenges
of Personal Information Management

• Harry Bruce, William Jones, Susan Dumais

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The Challenge
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• We regularly locate, encounter or acquire
  information that we know we will want to use
  again
• We need to organize and manage the information
  that we need to use for work, fun, and everyday
  tasks

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Keeping Found Things Found

• Studied how individuals manage information that
  they find or encounter and plan to use at a later
  point in time
• Focused on this behavior in relation to
  information located or encountered on the World
  Wide Web
• Participants
• Researchers
• Information specialists
• Managers
• Keeping Study
• Re-finding Study
• Survey
• Folders study

Selected results
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The Keeping Study

• Goals
• To understand the diversity of keeping and
  leaving methods that people use to manage Web
  information
• To analyze the underlying function of the
  observed keeping methods

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Observation

• Participants (24) were asked to pursue a work
  task using the Web
• observed and video recorded
• Participants were instructed to think aloud
  during the task, and to respond to interruptions
  and chance discoveries as they normally would

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Interview

• After the observation, participants were asked to
  fill in the gaps or to explain certain actions
• identified other keeping/leaving methods they
  might use in other situations of web use
• discussed the strengths and weaknesses of various
  methods

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The Re-finding Study

• Goal
• To explore the various methods that participants
  used for re-finding information previously
  located or encountered on the World Wide Web
• Participants
• twelve of the twenty-four participants from the
  Keeping Study

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Set up

• Sample of web sites recently visited
• obtained from the participants History list
• Frequency of access data (low, medium, high)
• Participants rate the likelihood of revisiting
  each site
• 75 or higher rating - participants provide a
  brief description of their activities at the site

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Observation

• 3-6 months later, participants were given cues
  for web sites selected from their descriptions of
  use in the set-up interview
• asked if they recalled the related web site based
  on the brief description of activities at the
  site
• asked to return to the cued web site

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Survey

• Goals
• To determine, from a larger sample of
  participants, if the list of observed keeping
  methods was complete and how frequently people
  use each method
• To find out why certain keeping methods are used
• Sample - 214

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Folders Study

• Goal To observe the role of folders in the
  organization of project-related information
• 14 participants
• Interviews
• Snapshots of collections of information related
  to selected projects

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Personal Information Collection

• Our personal subset of the larger information
  world
• A collection of information sources and channels
  that we as individuals have acquired, cultivated,
  and organized over time
• Where we turn first when we need information to
  do a task or pursue an interest

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Personal Information Collection

• A Mental Construct
• A Set of Things
• Content in various forms (documents, web pages,
  mail, notes, calendars, address books, etc.)
• Structures for representing and organizing this
  information (folder hierarchies, piles, lists,
  etc.)
• Pointers to information (people, links,
  favorites, etc).

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Personal Information Collection

• A set of processes and related behavior
• Selecting
• Keeping/ leaving
• Re-finding
• Maintaining

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Keeping Behavior

• Occurs when an individual identifies
  information as useful and engages in actions to
  make the information accessible in the future

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Methods - Keeping

• Send an email to self with URL
• Send an email to others that contains a web page
  reference
• Print out the web page
• Save the web page as a file

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Methods - Keeping

• Paste the URL in a document
• Add a hyperlink in a personal web page
• Bookmark the web page
• Write down the URL
• Copy to a links toolbar
• Create a note in Outlook

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Leaving - do nothing - Behavior

• Occurs when the individual recognizes the
  information is useful (and that it will be useful
  in the future), but also that it can be located
  again easily
• The individual makes a conscious decision to
  leave the information in situ
• For example, a regularly used website

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Methods Leaving (Do nothing)

• Remember the URL (or remember the first part of
  the URL and rely on the browser for suggested
  completion)
• Search for (find again) desired information
• Reach information later from a known point of
  access, such as a web portal

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Keeping - Leaving

• People report using on average just over 5
  methods for keeping web information at least once
  per week

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Top seven methods
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Keeping Leaving

• Individuals often use several keeping/leaving
  methods choosing these methods according to
  their functionality and the purpose that the
  information kept is likely to serve in the future

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Method selection (functionality and information
use)

• Context
• Participant can establish a context for why a
  website was kept
• Reminding
• Keeping method reminds participant about the
  information
• Ease of integration
• Method helps the participant to integrate new
  info or new references with ongoing projects or
  organizational schemes
• Communication and information sharing
• Method makes it easier to share information with
  others
• Ease of maintenance
• Method supports or facilitates the participants
  effort to maintain and update his or her personal
  information collection

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Method selection (functionality and information
use)

• Portability of information
• Participants can take information with them
• Number of access points
• Participant can access information from multiple
  places
• Persistence of information
• Web site content will remain relatively unchanged
  over time
• Preservation of information in its current state
• Design of web site will be preserved
• Currency of information
• Information can be refreshed to reflect the most
  current updates to the content

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Functionality influencing a participants
decision to use a keeping method
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Memory - Attention

• People keep masses of information that they never
  use - large stacks of good intentions for web
  references, paper documents, etc. they mean to
  read some day but never do
• People have information closets - especially in
  digital form
• People forget to use information they have kept
  until it is too late
• People go to great lengths to arrange and
  highlight information so that they can see the
  things that matter first
•  

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Fragmentation

• People complain about having too many information
  organizations - for email, e-documents, paper,
  web references
• Some people go to great lengths to consolidate
  these organizations

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The Google question

• Suppose that you could find your personal
  information using a simple search (fast,
  effortless to maintain, secure and private)
• Can we take away your folders?

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Folder study

• Yes - 1
• No 13

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The Google question

• Why are folders so important?
• Visibility Understanding Folders show the
  relationship between things
• Control Being sure the files needed are in one
  place
• Trust cant rely on search alone

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We need better PIM

• As individuals
• better use of precious resources (time, money,
  energy, attention) and, ultimately, a better
  quality to our lives.
• For organizations,
• Short term
• employee productivity and better team work
• Longer-term
• management and leverage of employee expertise.

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We need better PIM

• Progress in PIM must be made not only with new
  tools and technologies but also with new
  teachable information management techniques
• education programs in PIM literacy

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Next steps

• A. Fragmentation Integration
• Prototype development
• Information management and project management go
  hand-in-hand
• Un-application approach
• Universal labeler project planner
• B. Exploring personal information collection(s)
  (EPIC)

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Personal Information Collections

• Describe selected attributes (components, size,
  structures for organization, memory and access)
  of personal information collections that are used
  for work roles and tasks
• How do people decide what to include in a
  personal information collection?
• How do people organize and manage information in
  a personal information collection?
• How do people find information they need in a
  personal information collection?