From User Needs to Opportunities in Personal Information Management: A Case Study on Organisational Strategies in Cross-Media Information Spaces

Presentation given at DL 2014, International Conference on Digital Libraries, London, UK, September, 2014

ABSTRACT: The efficient management of our daily information in physical and digital information spaces is a well-known problem. Current research on personal information management (PIM) aims to understand and improve organisational and re-finding activities. We present a case study about organisational strategies in cross-media information spaces, consisting of physical as well as digital information. In contrast to existing work, we provide a unified view on organisational strategies and investigate how re-finding cues differ across the physical and digital space. We further introduce a new mixing organisational strategy which is used in addition to the well-known filing and piling strategies. Last but not least, based on the results of our study we discuss opportunities and pitfalls for future descriptive PIM research and outline some directions for future PIM system design.

Research paper: https://beatsigner.com/publications/from-user-needs-to-opportunities-in-personal-information-management-a-case-study-on-organisational-strategies-in-cross-media-information-spaces.pdf

Transcript

1. 2 December 2005
   From User Needs to Opportunities in
   Personal Information Management
   A Case Study on Organisational Strategies in Cross-Media Information Spaces
   Sandra Trullemans and Beat Signer
   Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab (WISE)
   Department of Computer Science
   Vrije Universiteit Brussel
   WEB & INFORMATION
   SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
   

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2. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 2
   September 9, 2014
   Personal Cross-Media Information
   physical space digital space
   

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3. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 3
   September 9, 2014
   Filing and Piling Strategies
   Elements Groups
   Titled Ordered Titled Ordered
   Files Yes Yes ? ?
   Piles ? No No ?
   Malone, 1983 filing
   piling
   ▪ One-dimensional order variable
   filing piling
   

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4. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 4
   September 9, 2014
   ▪ Is order only determined by filing and piling?
   ▪ Is there any coherency or dependency between these
   organisational strategies in digital and physical space?
   ▪ Do we use the same re-finding cues after applying an
   organisational strategy in physical and digital space?
   Research Questions
   filing piling
   

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5. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 5
   September 9, 2014
   Methodology
   ▪ Embedded multi-case case study
   ▪ 2 cases (digital and physical)
   ▪ Units of analysis
   ▪ use of organisational strategies
   ▪ ease of re-finding
   ▪ use of re-finding cues
   ▪ Cross-case analysis
   ▪ Data collection
   ▪ observation (first phase)
   ▪ survey (second phase)
   case 1
   physical space
   case 2
   digital space
   

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6. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 6
   September 9, 2014
   Observation
   ▪ 6 academic offices
   ▪ Identification of new organisational strategies
   ▪ Compilation of valid questions for the survey
   ▪ Identification and definition of new mixing strategy
   

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7. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 7
   September 9, 2014
   Mixing Strategy
   Elements Groups
   Titled Ordered Titled Ordered
   Files Yes Yes ? ?
   Piles ? No No ?
   Malone, 1983
   

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8. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 8
   September 9, 2014
   Online Survey
   ▪ Use of organisational strategies
   ▪ factorisation in filing, piling and mixing
   ▪ Ease of re-finding
   ▪ how easy do we re-find in a digital file system, …
   ▪ Use of re-finding cues
   ▪ use of folder labels, …
   ▪ Open-ended questions
   ▪ tools for re-finding
   

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9. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 9
   September 9, 2014
   Data Analysis
   ▪ Participants
   ▪ 170 respondents
   ▪ international academic population
   ▪ Ordinal data on a 5-point Likert scale
   ▪ Normal distribution not guaranteed
   ▪ Correlations determined by Spearman’s rho (p<0.05)
   ▪ Differences in factors by Wilcoxon signed-rank test (p<0.05)
   

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10. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 10
    September 9, 2014
    General Use of Organisational Strategies
    ▪ Common use of the mixing strategy
    ▪ Less filing than piling and mixing
    

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11. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 11
    September 9, 2014
    Use of Strategies Across Spaces
    ▪ No difference between digital and physical space
    ▪ No correlation between strategies
    BUT…
    

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12. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 12
    September 9, 2014
    What do the Results Tell Us?
    ▪ Piles and mixtures are most frequently used
    ▪ Use of extra filing tools
    ▪ digital file systems: “Never happy with the used tools”
    ▪ physical file cabinets
    - post-it notes
    - archive cards
    - digital index
    - …
    ▪ Lack of insights about the mixing strategy
    ▪ Users have individual cross-media strategies
    

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13. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 13
    September 9, 2014
    Ease of Re-finding
    ▪ But significantly more piling than filing!
    

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14. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 14
    September 9, 2014
    Re-finding Cues
    Context cue Spatial cue Time cue
    Physical space Filing ✓ ✓ ✓
    Piling ✓ ✓
    Mixing ✓ ✓
    Digital space Filing ✓
    Piling ✓
    Mixing ✓ ✓
    

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15. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 15
    September 9, 2014
    Filing Re-finding Cues
    ▪ Digital space
    ▪ Physical space
    context cue
    context cue spatial cue time cue
    

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16. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 16
    September 9, 2014
    Directions for PIM System Design
    ▪ Provide suitable augmentations for each strategy
    ▪ Support appropriate re-finding cues in the right strategy
    ▪ Support for cross-media re-finding activities
    ▪ include physical space
    ▪ cross-media annotations
    

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17. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 17
    September 9, 2014
    Conclusion
    ▪ New insights about organisational landscape
    ▪ Piles and mixtures more frequently used than filing
    ▪ Re-finding is different for each strategy in digital and
    physical space
    ▪ Directions for future PIM system design
    

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18. Sandra Trullemans, strullem@vub.ac.be 18
    September 9, 2014
    filing piling
    ▪ Mixing as a third organisational strategy
    ▪ It is normal to use paper and to be “unorganised”
    ▪ Order cannot be expressed as a one-dimensional variable
    ▪ Organisational strategies should be augmented with
    support for the right re-finding cues
    ▪ Exploration of cross-media organising and
    re-finding solutions
    Give Away Message
    
    

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