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.
There is a long history of calendar studies in human-com -pu -ter interaction literature. Early research on calendar use predates electronic calendars. In 1982, Kelley and Chapanis @cite_29 interviewed 23 professionals to discover how people in the business world kept track of their schedules. They found that for the individuals interviewed, calendars were indispensable and showed a lot of diversity in their use. The use of multiple calendars was prevalent, and a wide variation was seen in the time spans viewed, as well as in other aspects such as archiving, editing and portable access. Many of the problems identified in paper calendars could be solved in electronic calendars, and they concluded with a list of features for emerging electronic calendars to implement. Soon afterwards, Kincaid and Pierre @cite_28 examined the use of paper and electronic calendars in two groups, and concluded that electronic calendars failed to provide several key features such as flexibility, power, and convenience, that paper calendars did. They recommended many useful features to be incorporated into electronic calendar systems as well.
@cite_28 @cite_29
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Manufacturers of integrated electronic office systems have included electronic versions of the calendar in almost every system they offer. This paper describes a survey of office workers, carried out to examine their use both of paper calendars and of electronic calendars that are commercially available as part of integrated office systems. It assesses the degree to which electronic calendars meet the needs of users. Our survey shows that the simple paper calendar is a tool whose power and flexibility is matched by few, if any, of the current commercially available electronic calendars. Recommendations for features that should be included in electronic calendars and automatic schedulers are included. 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.