In this paper, we report on findings from an ethnographic study of how people use their calendars for personal information management (PIM). Our participants were faculty, staff and students who were not required to use or contribute to any specific calendaring solution, but chose to do so anyway. The study was conducted in three parts: first, an initial survey provided broad insights into how calendars were used; second, this was followed up with personal interviews of a few participants which were transcribed and content-analyzed; and third, examples of calendar artifacts were collected to inform our analysis. Findings from our study include the use of multiple reminder alarms, the reliance on paper calendars even among regular users of electronic calendars, and wide use of calendars for reporting and life-archival purposes. We conclude the paper with a discussion of what these imply for designers of interactive calendar systems and future work in PIM research.
In the field of Personal Information Management, the management of various information collections such as files @cite_20 , folders @cite_12 , email @cite_6 bookmarks @cite_34 and cross-collection issues @cite_9 @cite_22 have been studied widely. Calendars are an important part of users' personal information, and this domain can benefit from a re-examination in the wake of electronic and ubiquitous calendar systems.
@cite_22 @cite_9 @cite_6 @cite_34 @cite_20 @cite_12
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This paper presents a modified diary study that investigated how people performed personally motivated searches in their email, in their files, and on the Web. Although earlier studies of directed search focused on keyword search, most of the search behavior we observed did not involve keyword search. Instead of jumping directly to their information target using keywords, our participants navigated to their target with small, local steps using their contextual knowledge as a guide, even when they knew exactly what they were looking for in advance. This stepping behavior was especially common for participants with unstructured information organization. The observed advantages of searching by taking small steps include that it allowed users to specify less of their information need and provided a context in which to understand their results. We discuss the implications of such advantages for the design of personal information management tools. The advent of the Internet has made the transmission of personally identifiable information more common and often unintended by the user. As personal information becomes more accessible, individuals worry that businesses misuse the information that is collected while they are online. Organizations have tried to mitigate this concern in two ways: (1) by offering privacy policies regarding the handling and use of personal information and (2) by offering benefits such as financial gains or convenience. In this paper, we interpret these actions in the context of the information-processing theory of motivation. Information-processing theories, also known as expectancy theories in the context of motivated behavior, are built on the premise that people process information about behavior-outcome relationships. By doing so, they are forming expectations and making decisions about what behavior to choose. Using an experimental setting, we empirically validate predictions that the means to mitigate privacy concerns are associated with positive valences resulting in an increase in motivational score. In a conjoint analysis exercise, 268 participants from the United States and Singapore face trade-off situations, where an organization may only offer incomplete privacy protection or some benefits. While privacy protections (against secondary use, improper access, and error) are associated with positive valences, we also find that financial gains and convenience can significantly increase individuals' motivational score of registering with a Web site. We find that benefits-monetary reward and future convenience-significantly affect individuals' preferences over Web sites with differing privacy policies. We also quantify the value of Web site privacy protection. Among U.S. subjects, protection against errors, improper access, and secondary use of personal information is worth @math 44.62. Finally, our approach also allows us to identify three distinct segments of Internet users-privacy guardians, information sellers, and convenience seekers. This paper summarizes and synthesizes two independent studies of the ways users organize and find files on their computers. The first study (Barreau 1995) investigated information organization practices among users of DOS, Windows and OS 2. The second study (Nardi, Anderson and Erickson 1995), examined the finding and filing practices of Macintosh users. There were more similarities in the two studies than differences. Users in both studies (1) preferred location-based finding because of its crucial reminding function; (2) avoided elaborate filing schemes; (3) archived relatively little information; and (4) worked with three types of information: ephemeral, working and archived. A main difference between the study populations was that the Macintosh users used subdirectories to organize information and the DOS users did not. Traditionally users access their personal files mainly by usingfolder navigation. We evaluate whether recent improvements indesktop search have changed this fundamental aspect of PersonalInformation Management (PIM). We tested this in two studies usingthe same questionnaire: (a) The Windows Studya longitudinalcomparison of Google Desktop and Windows XP SearchCompanion, and (b) The Mac Studya large scale comparison of MacSpotlight and Sherlock. There were few effects forimproved search. First, regardless of search engine, there was astrong navigation preference: on average, users estimated that theyused navigation for 56-68 of file retrieval events but searchedfor only 4-15 of events. Second, the effect of improving thequality of the search engine on search usage was limited andinconsistent. Third, search was used mainly as a last resort whenusers could not remember file location. Finally, there was noevidence that using improved desktop search engines leads people tochange their filing habits to become less reliant on hierarchicalfile organization. We conclude by offering theoretical explanationsfor navigation preference, relating to differences between PIM andInternet retrieval, and suggest alternative design directions forPIM systems.