Q: a pre-planed task …. we forget about it and environment reminds of of doing it. Is this still a pre-planed task? Environment can trigger new and forgotten tasks. (e.g. browsing the emails in the inbox triggers a forgotten task to remind a friend of the upcoming event (forgotten task) or browsing a media library makes us listening to samba music (new task)).
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Q: how is the information in the TIC managed in separate tools? Is the support for such mental linking adequate – does categorization in applications support this graph structures? How do this mentally linked graphs reflect on a desktop and on he web? How long are mental links alive based on task duration and essentiality?
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Q: what about all email in the inbox? Or all downloaded files in the temp folder? How did these relate to TICs?
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Q: a pre-planed task …. we forget about it and environment reminds of of doing it. Is this still a pre-planed task? Environment can trigger new and forgotten tasks. (e.g. browsing the emails in the inbox triggers a forgotten task to remind a friend of the upcoming event (forgotten task) or browsing a media library makes us listening to samba music (new task)).
On the other hand automatically acquired information is not based on our needs and tasks we need to perform, but it often triggers new tasks: thus it is always related to environment driven tasks.
| Preplanned task | Environment driven task | |
| Intentionally acquired information | x | x |
| Unintentionally acquired information | x |
Table 1: Relation between task and acquisition
Scenarios:
- Listening to the radio in the office makes me buy music online and store it on my PC (environment driven task – manually acquired information).
- Receiving email (automatically acquired) requires immediate action (environment driven).
- Have to plan a party (pre-planed task) need to create a list of guests, find a restaurant online – bookmark some pages, email guests, create a party plan, find some tips online (manually acquired information).
Steps in need for information:
- (Environment driven Tasks (automatically acquired or salient items))
1. Receive information (like email) or other triggers that start a new task
- Pre-planed task & Environment-driven task
2. Think of (all) information needed to complete it.
3. Activate other information that is related to it (this information might not even exist yet).
4. Repeat steps 2. and 3. as needed.
A task is thus related to information items that are needed to complete it. A collection of information items needed to complete a task is a Task Information Collection (TIC). All TICs are part of PSI. A TIC can include information items from several applications and hierarchies (files, emails, web sites and bookmarks, notes in calendar, post-it applications, contacts in an address book …).
Notes of TICs – assumptions:
- In separate applications information can be grouped together but information can not be grouped together if it is managed by different applications. Users keep mental links between information that can not be managed together. So they keep the mental linked graph in their minds which is a potential source of problems in retrieval (unable to find information), organizing (fail to organize some information we forget it is related to a task), management (fail to archive all information related to a task) when links (and information related to them) are forgotten.
- The collection (of mental links between information items) starts forming and it changes in time as new information items are brought into the collection and other items leave it. TIC can be described as alive always-changing structure which is again a potential source of problems in information management.
- Task completed, information is not needed any more or it is not accessed so often. Some collections are shrunk (some mental link between items forgotten) or even fade away with time (all mental links forgotten). So TICs disappear from our PSI even if information related to it does not.
- Tasks have subtasks and tasks overlap. So can TICs have subTICs and TICs can overlap with other TICs (for example a folder of papers we use as a reference source for many papers we write or two projects we work on with the same person and and this persons entry in a contact manager application is in TICs of both projects.)
- TICs of different people overlap as they share the task: if I send an email to someone it is in this person’s inbox and in my sent folder – so its a part of my TIC and a part of this persons’ TIC.
- Manually acquired information can take immediate place in a TIC (even in a dump area or its own TIC). While automatically acquired must be assessed before taking part of any TIC. It could take apart of an existing TIC (related to a task) or start a new TIC.
- PIC can be related to a task or not – organizing all web bookmarks together forms a PIC, but sometimes our thought is focused only on a subset of web bookmarks which is related to a task; this subset is a PIC that is also a part of TIC
Q: how is the information in the TIC managed in separate tools? Is the support for such mental linking adequate – does categorization in applications support this graph structures? How do this mentally linked graphs reflect on a desktop and on he web? How long are mental links alive based on task duration and essentiality?
Q: what about all email in the inbox? Or all downloaded files in the temp folder? How did these relate to TICs?
E.g. forming a TIC for a task ”planing for holiday”: read and bookmark few travel and reviews pages, book a hotel, buy a plane ticket, store the invoice(s) in a file hierarchy, make a list of things needed for a trip, search online for some medical advice for a chosen destination, email few people about the trip when on trip, chat with the family while on trip, send some electronic cards of visited places, store photos in a file hierarchy after the trip, email some photos to some people, create a CD with all the photos, write a blog about the trip …
Here a trip is a task which is divided in several tasks and even sub-tasks. Only digital information is mentioned but information from the real world is there as well (postcards, travel books, printed tickets, reservation numbers …). All this information forms a collections of information related to the trip. It exists on a personal computers, email account, web … After some time only photos might be remembered as invoices, emails and other information don’t have much value anymore (as anticipated future use is not in the sight).
From this example it is clear that information collection starts forming with a task. Deciding on a trip destination and starting searching for web sites that describe it. From here on new information needed to complete the task starts forming the personal information collection:
- web sites about the destination and possible bookmarks (some web sites might not be bookmarked but information we read on those sites is remembered and so forms the same information collection)
- files like list of needed items
- online hotel reservation page, confirmation email and the invoice in a PDF format we save to file hierarchy and print out
- online plane ticket, confirmation email with the actual ticket in PDF format we print out
- emails sent to friends with attached photos from file hierarchy
- chat histories with the family about the trip progress
- web sites with electronic cards we sent ….
We can see that some information items that form this collection goes on other peoples computers (emails, chat histories, electronic cards …).
