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.
Nearly 10 years after Kelley and Chapanis' original study, Payne @cite_19 conducted interviews with 30 knowledge workers about both calendars and to-do lists, followed by a task analysis of his observations. He concluded that the central task supported by calendars was . Prospective remembering is the use of memory for remembering to do things in the future, as different from retrospective memory functions such as recalling past events.
@cite_19
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This article is an interview study of calendar use and a cognitive analysis of the interactions between the design of calendars and the task of prospective remembering. The study and analysis are coordinated to present a general critique of current electronic calendar designs and to note opportunities for future designs. The interview data reveal continued use of paper calendars in a highly computerized setting. A key conclusion is that paper calendars support prospective remembering by promoting browsing of existing appointments during subsequent calendar keeping but that this advantage is compromised in current electronic designs. Other aspects of the interviews and the analyses address the representational limitations of both paper and electronic calendars. This research explores a methodology in which design implications of qualitative empirical data are understood and systematized through theoretical analyses of existing artifacts.