Deconstructing and reconstructing PIM (Personal Information Management)

Online seminar 17th September 2024

https://alandix.com/academic/talks/PIM-seminar-2024/

This talk is based on my recent article "The future of PIM: pragmatics and potential". The article is a roadmap-style piece and covers a lot of ground, so in this talk I attempt to give an overview as well as delve into a few examples in detail. The talk brings together two methods to give a lens onto past literature and future directions. First, we will deconstruct the term “PIM” looking at each word in detail and see how there are PIM or PIM-like tools that stretch the term and thus offer insights. Second, we look at a few popular commercial PIM tools and the lessons and issues they surface. Finally these come together with established literature, to recast old concerns, such as fragmentation, and to formulate new issues and challenges.

1. Alan Dix @ alanjohndix https:// alandix.com /academic/talks/PIM-seminar-2024/ Deconstructing and Reconstructing PIM

2. 2 nd edition coming soon plus AI for HCI AI for Social Justice plugs

3. promise of PIM PIM research does it make a difference? ideas and concepts trickle through ( Klujn et al., 2015) e.g. threading MONA => gmail tech innovation start-ups loads of apps! personal knowledge management, personal productivity tools (Cockburn & Thimbleby . 1993; Cockburn, 1994)

4. plan … analysis deconstruct P ersonal I nformation M anagement examine some interesting and popular apps synthesis technology and features human context

5. deconstructing PIM

6. deconstructing PIM P ersonal I nformation M anagement

7. deconstructing PIM P ersonal organisation–individual conflicts friends and community informal collaborative systems

8. deconstructing PIM P ersonal community, organisation, friends personal management of shared/common information e.g. Snip!t

9. deconstructing PIM P ersonal I nformation knowledge, insight purpose? … not autotelic – if PIM is designed for PIM it fails tasks and action e.g. to do lists, calendars, …

10. deconstructing PIM P ersonal I nformation M anagement dis organisaton , dumping, for what? 99% never accessed … Keeping found things found? insight The Marks are on the Knowledge Worker (Kidd, 1994) task-focus e.g. PARA ( project, area , resource, archive)

11. deconstructing PIM P ersonal informal collaborative systems PM of shared/common information I nformation knowledge, insight, action not autotelic – external purpose M anagement dis organisaton , filing for what? insight, task-focus

12. PIM in practice

13. PIM in practice big ticket players Office suites – to do, notes, etc Evernote popular apps Workflowy – outliner ++ Notion – strong on data Obsidian – personal Wiki Readwise – aggregator

14. clicking a tag opens a search window for the tag outliner-style with title line, description, and nested sub-items. rapid text entry using tab/shift-tab Workflowy

15. Interlinked wiki-style pages with both semi-structured fields and unstructured text collections of pages can be treated as a database with multiple kinds of views Notion

16. note-taking interface allowing external URLs, rich formatting and internal wiki-style links using [[notation]] beneath the surface markdown files Obsidian

17. low distraction UI to focus on books and highlights within books Readwise

18. lessons simple functionality allowing rich usage different styles but with enthusiastic users not ‘baked bean products’ strong communities of shared practice ‘hacks’ of usage some open API for code sharing (c.f. Xerox Buttons)

19. guidelines for appropriation allow interpretation provide visibility expose intentions support not control plugability and configuration encourage sharing learn from appropriation Alan Dix (2007). Designing for Appropriation. in Proc. BCS HCI 2007, https:// www.alandix.com /academic/papers/papers/HCI2007-appropriation/

20. using technology

21. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation media applications devices people

22. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating cloud sharing and 1970s filing systems book and web annotation Semantic Desktop … but URLs … https:// mail.google.com /mail/u/0 /#label/data /{id} raw URL: https:// mail.google.com /mail/ u/0 /#inbox /{id} canonical? how you found it order of authenticating in browser session

23. GLOI plug-in OAP originating application LRA local resolution agent GRA global resolution authority metadata passed to appropriate application send GLOI as standard http request http://... local resource located and opened Web World Local Device RAP recipient application (often browser) a web page link to GLOI within it enhanced metadata returned http://... user clicks GLOI link metadata passed to LRA we need GLOIs!

24. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating cloud sharing and 1970s filing systems book and web annotation Semantic Desktop URLs and GLOIs need cross-toll integration

25. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating numbers and data specific visualisations – e.g. fitness, QS little for numbers beyond spreadsheets personal numerical information management

26. ‘till roll’ to see past calculations basic four function calculator clicking past entry in till roll copies the value into current sum till roll entries can be edited and named calQ

27. values can be editable or computed from others ws2 – explorable web calculations

28. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating numbers and data UI matters email & folders Dynalist vs Workflowy … also habit and investment

29. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating numbers and data UI matters AI is the answer? long history of task inference and automatic filing remember Tom Baker … LLMs … PIM data small – transfer learning essential …. but what about insight?

30. using technology fragmentation and synchronisation not an island – connecting and annotating numbers and data UI matters AI is the answer?

31. understanding people

32. understanding people organisation: when and why? collaboration with future self (Bergman and Whittaker, 2016) Kidd’s marks – do we need it anyway? search – reactive or proactive direct hyperlinks from other pages, entered as [[LaTeX]] in the markdown free text mentions

33. understanding people organisation: when and why? collaboration with future self (Bergman and Whittaker, 2016) Kidd’s marks – do we need it anyway? search – reactive or proactive cost–benefit closer – organisation at point of need Kidd’s marks – organisation for insight

34. understanding people organisation: when and why? communities and appropriation support not control pluggability and configuration encourage sharing

35. understanding people organisation: when and why? communities and appropriation people are different different practices similar efficiency (Kaye et al. 2006) ontologies: generic, egocentric, idiosyncratic cognitive differences – hard to comprehend … including HCI researchers! different solutions for different people … but how do they collaborate?

36. understanding people organisation: when and why? communities and appropriation people are different emotion management GTD – The art of stress-free productivity to-do list – not-done list – done list magick and quests, gamification

37. understanding people organisation: when and why? communities and appropriation people are different emotion management

38. take aways … informal collaborative systems purpose & task-centred fragmentation and integration GLOIs, cross-tool infrastructure appropriation by design emotion matters … designing for solitude

39. Deconstructing and Reconstructing PIM Alan Dix https:// alandix.com /academic/talks/PIM-seminar-2024/