"Stuff Goes into the Computer and Doesn't Come Out" A Cross-tool
Study of Personal Information Management
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing
systems, CHI, volume 6 of CHI Letters, page 583 - 590. ACM Press, New York, (2004)Abstract
This paper reports a study of Personal Information Management (PIM),
which advances research in two ways: (1) rather than focusing on
one tool, we collected cross-tool data relating to file, email and
web bookmark usage for each participant, and (2) we collected longitudinal
data for a subset of the participants. We found that individuals
employ a rich variety of strategies both within and across PIM tools,
and we present new strategy classifications that reflect thisbehaviour.
We discuss synergies and differences between tools that may be useful
in guiding the design of tool
integration. Our longitudinal data provides insight into how PIM behaviour
evolves over time, and suggests that the supporting nature of PIM
discourages reflection by users on their strategies. We discuss how
users may benefit if tools and organizations promote increased reflection
on PIM.
