Summarization and Personal Information Management

1. Summarization and Personal Information Management Carolyn Penstein Rosé Language Technologies Institute/ Human-Computer Interaction Institute

2. Meet your classmates!

3. Announcements • Questions? • Homework 2 Assigned (Due Feb 19) • Take a look at the feedback you received • Plan for Today • Dabbish & Kraut • Understanding the impact of voluminous email • Whittaker & Sidner • Understanding the different uses and ways of managing email • Student presentation (José P. González-Brenes)

4. Focus on Email • Why email? • Central importance in business and social life • Used for multiple purposes • All on-line – so convenient for a technology solution • Interesting example of mismatch across communities • HCI community emphasizes multi-dimensional use of email with a focus on the process of task management • Language tech community focuses on content, with a focus on spam and prioritization

5. Plan for next 3 lectures • Today: High level overview • Methodology focus: survey research • Specifics of email management strategies • Tuesday: In-depth look at the process of task management through email • Relationships between group dynamics and email management • Thursday: In-depth look at an email product development life-cycle in a large corporation

6. Focus on Survey Research • Ethnographic studies give us an up-close-and-personal view of a problem • Small sample size leaves us unable to make strong claims or very specific claims • Survey research is the opposite • Much sharper focus – possible to have a much larger sample size • Able to address many specific connections and fine grained distinctions

7. Dabbish & Kraut: Survey Research • Deep understanding of the concept of email strain

8. Process • Theoretical foundation • Model building/Hypothesis formation • Survey design • Data collection • Model refinement • Data Analysis • Interpreting findings

9. Methodological Fine Points • Huge sample size • Principled design of survey • Questions motivated by prior work, both theoretical and empirical, questions from multiple angles • Model built a priory based on hypotheses • Not a “fishing expedition” • Confirmation about aggregation • Chronbach’s alpha – top-down verification • Factor analysis – bottom-up verification • Each part of the model confirmed separately • Appropriate hedging due to limitations of the approach

11. Findings Note that aggregation was only for dependent measures.

12. More Findings

13. Implications • Low R2 values show that we’re missing some important factors • Personalization • Effect of Job characteristics on email work importance, and indirectly on perception of overload and problems with coordination supports different solutions for different people • Maybe also more targeted solutions • Effect of email overload on task coordination is interesting • Principle for design of task-based evaluations of solutions

14. Whittaker & Sidner • People use email for a variety of purposes • José will give the details • Will also introduce some technology from the RADAR project • Discussion: how can we use that technology to address the various uses of email and support different types of users • My high level intro: • Connection with Lansdale paper?

15. What’s it all about • Connection with Lansdale • Many of the issues related to automating management of information are psychological in nature • Compensatory strategies for managing attention • Whittaker & Sidner talk about what people do and how that is related to their environment, but not why they are doing it • The problem with a lot of email is that it’s not clear what to pay attention to

16. Predictable Problems • Extraneous “failed” folders • Leaving things in the inbox for months • Not filing things • Not being able to find things after they were filed

17. Questions?

18. Homework 2 • Project proposal • Poster will be presented in class on Feb 19 • The Problem • Potential Solution • Research questions and needs • Convince other students that they have something valuable to contribute • PowerPoint, 8inX14in, print to Spectrum or other color printer • Ask Rohit if you need help