Selected Topics in Human-Computer Interaction

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Tutorial by William Jones

Topic	Personal Information Management in Theory and Practice
Teacher	William Jones, The Information School, University of Washington, USA
Time and place	24.5.2005, 9.15-13.00 Pinni B (Kehruukoulunkatu 1, Tampere), room B3111
Teaching	This tutorial 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 tutorial includes the following: A historical overview of PIM with special emphasis on developments over the past 20 years. An analytical breakdown of PIM with respect to key problems, activities of information management (assessment of need, finding, keeping, organization & maintenance, re-finding…) and domains of information management (email, web, e-documents, paper…). An assessment of current PIM research and development – including promising lines of empirical inquiry, theoretical development and tool development. A practical review of enduring “dos” and “don’ts” of personal information management. An overview of the many tools that promise to help with PIM. The tutorial will provide a way of evaluating these tools with respect to key activities of PIM. Special attention is given to new tool developments of the past year or so. The tutorial is highly interactive. Tutorial participants will have the opportunity to assess and refine their own individual strategies of PIM. Participants can begin work on their own Personal Unifying Taxonomies in support of these strategies. The tutorial will also cover the differing tool requirements of different strategies: Different strategies require different kinds of tool support. The tutorial is designed for a general audience. Researchers, especially in related areas such as information retrieval and library management, will have an opportunity to learn more about PIM as a field of inquiry. But personal information management is something we all must do. Everyone who attends will have an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of PIM, its fundamental problems, the roles it plays in daily life and the ways in which selected strategies and supporting tools can help.
Registration	All participants are requested to register in advance. Attendance is restricted to 15 participants. Confirmations will be sent separately.
About the teacher	William Jones is an Associate Research Professor at the The Information School, University of Washington, USA. He manages the Keeping Found Things Found (KFTF) project (http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/) in collaboration with Dr. Harry Bruce. Dr. Jones earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University for his investigations into human memory. He has published basic research in cognitive psychology as well as more applied research into information retrieval and human/computer interaction. His research includes pioneering explorations into the application of human memory research to the design of information retrieval systems (nearly 20 years ago) as well as the uses of “pictures of relevance” to provide visual expression to underlying properties of vector-based measures of similarity. More recently, Dr. Jones served as a program manager at the Microsoft Corporation, where he was involved in the production of information retrieval-related features for both Microsoft Office and MSN Search. Prior to his work at Microsoft, Dr. Jones led an effort at Boeing to create an information repository for flight deck problems and design rationale – credited with saving Boeing several million dollars per year in search time alone. Dr. Jones holds five patents in the area of information retrieval.

Last update on May 18, 2005.

Kari-Jouko Räihä (kjr@cs.uta.fi)