Towards memory supporting personal information management tools

In this article we discuss re-retrie personal i ation ects and relate the task to rec ri lapse(s) in e We propose that entall it is lapses in e that i pede users success l re ndi the i ation the nee Our hesis is that learni ore about e lapses in non-c puti contexts and how people cope and recover from these lapses, we can better inform the design of PIM tools and improve the user's ability to re-access and re-use objects. We describe a diary study that investigates the everyday memory problems of 25 people from a wide range of backgrounds. Based on the findings, we present a series of principles that we hypothesize will improve the design of personal information management tools. This hypothesis is validated by an evaluation of a tool for managing personal photographs, which was designed with respect to our findings. The evaluation suggests that users’ performance when re-finding objects can be improved by building personal information management tools to support characteristics of human memory.