Time Schedule:
William P. Jones
INSC 598
Seattle Campus
Class description
Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities we each perform constantly throughout the day to manage our information in all its various forms (e.g., as email, files, web pages and paper), and with all our various tools and gadgets, to get things done. Information is often the great waster of our energy, attention and, most of all, our time. But information also provides the means to better manage these precious resources.
PIM provides an integrative meeting ground for the disciplines of cognitive science, human-computer interaction, database management, artificial intelligence, information and knowledge management, information retrieval and information science. What are we struggling to do with our information? How can systems – computer-based and not – help us?
Student learning goals
This course provides an overview of Personal Information Management or PIM both as a field of inquiry and as an activity that all of us of necessity perform every day. The course includes the following: 1.) A historical overview of PIM with special emphasis on developments over the past 20 years. 2.) An analytical breakdown of PIM with respect to key challenges and activities of information management including finding/re-finding, keeping, organizing, maintaining, managing privacy and the flow of information). 3.) An assessment of current PIM research and development – including promising lines of empirical inquiry, theoretical development and tool development. 4.) A practical assessment of our individual practices of PIM. What can we do now with existing tools? .5.) A overview of the many tools that promise to help with PIM. The course will provide a “yardstick” that can be used to evaluate these tools. Which will work for us now and over the longer term? Which are worth the trouble?
Part One. Understanding PIM:
1. Foundations of PIM. Six kinds of activity. Six senses of personal information. Defining a Personal Space of Information (PSI).
2. Teaching better PIM.
3. Finding and re-finding.
4. Keeping, organizing and maintaining personal information.
5. Managing privacy and flow. Meta-level activities and the mapping between information and need.
Part Two. Improving PIM:
6. Email, instant messaging, face to face and other modes of communication. Task management.
7. Search
8. PIM on the Web
9. PIM on the go. Mobile computing. “Nomadic” computing.
10. Bringing the pieces together. Course wrap-up
General method of instruction
Guest lectures will be provided by Bob Boiko, Harry Bruce, Mary Czerwinksi, Susan Dumais, Mike Eisenberg, Karen Fisher, Jim Gemmell, Jaime Teevan and others. The course is highly interactive. Students will have the opportunity to assess and refine their own individual strategies of PIM. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in a team project to build a better “system” of PIM (coding or the development of computer-based prototype is optional).
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Students will be asked to do the following:
1. Maintain an on-going, weekly log of their own PIM practice. As we move through different topics of the course, students will have the opportunity to share their own experiences using their log as a reference point. Students will have the opportunity to discuss possible ways to improve their practices of PIM. Students will then be encouraged to selectively implement some of these potential improvements and to report back on results.
2. Select and lead discussion on one PIM related article (of the student’s choice).
3. Participate in a team project resulting in a term paper and a finals week presentation. Teams will compete with each other to establish requirements for, design, prototype and evaluate a better system of PIM. The system does not necessarily involve programming or the coding of a new, improved computer-based tool. Instead, the system might focus primarily on a better scheme of organization or strategies for the better use of current tools.
