Personal information management practices and technologies in an undergraduate biology class

1. Personal information management practices and technologies in an undergraduate biology class Abe Crystal http://ils.unc.edu/~acrystal Metadata Research Center – School of Information and Library Science

2. The Story of Blackboard

3. Agenda • What is personal information management (PIM)? • What is Abe’s take on all this?Research approachFindings: practices, strategies, issuesFindings: MyLifeBits usage and user experience • So what?Implications: toward Social Information Management

4. 1. What is personal information management? • Four core tasks: • Refinding • Reminding and task management • Making order • Reflection and metacognition • PIM systems and technologies • MyLifeBits

5. MyLifeBits

6. 2. What is Abe’s take on all this? • Try to understand people’s behavior to inform the design of PIM systems. • Four months of ethnographic (participant observation) research in an undergraduate biology class. • Look at how people use state-of-the-art PIM systems, and try to figure out how to improve them. • Technology probe with MyLifeBits, and participatory design.

7. From the field: 8 themes in PIM behavior Theme 1: Project management Theme 2: Collaboration Theme 3: Dynamic, evolving task structures Theme 4: Shared awareness/gaps Theme 5: Affect and narrative Theme 6: Learning PIM Theme 7: Social information management Theme 8: Priority and relevance

8. MyLifeBits usage: extent of use

9. MyLifeBits usage: extent of use Table 3. MLB activity vs. common PIM tool activity.

10. MyLifeBits usage: extent of use Table 4. MLB activity vs. common PIM activity (ratios).

11. MyLifeBits usage: extent of use Table 5. Size of MLB store.

12. MyLifeBits usage: extent of use Table 6. Typical queries and annotations.

13. MyLifeBits usage: key scenarios • Refinding a project-related website or article to support collaboration. • Refinding ephemeral or difficult-to-search-for websites. • Visual refinding. • Adding contextual information with annotations. • Creating a meaningful personal information architecture with collections.

14. MyLifeBits – example student search

15. MyLifeBits user experience: key issues • Redundancy in browse and search • Identical URL’s in results list • Clutter in thumbnail view • Window/UI management • Zoom/scroll • Parameter management • Lost in search space • Cognitive effort • Creating annotations, collections; ranking

16. Design concepts: toward MySocialLifeBitsBookSpacrZon • 6 key insights from fieldwork and technology probe inform the design exploration: • Fragmentation across media and tools • PIM training, not just PIM tools • Large variations in PIM and technology skills • We’re not on the same page • Social cues essential to keeping up • Institutions and incentives drive and constrain PIM

21. Key ideas to take away • PIM is kind of a big deal. It’s what we spend a lot of our working lives doing... • … but current PIM systems and technologies implement a narrow vision of PIM tasks… • … so we all have the potential to improve our PIM effectiveness, through techniques such as… • Education, especially for collaboration and reflection • Technology, especially social technologies