Seeking an ideal solution to the management of personal information collections

This paper reports on the observation over time of 20 participants engaged in working on personal projects. The goal of the study was to understand how people organize and structure a personal information collection. The data reported focus upon the steps that individuals take to change their personal information collections during the course of a project and the motivations for seeking a more ideal solution to their information management challenges. The researchers found that observing people over time as they find, select, collect, organize, and manage information for a personal project provides an excellent context for studying the challenges of personal information management (PIM). Participants changed the structure and organization of their information collections by adding new folders or new categories, increasing the number of separate piles for information, or adding tags. They collected more information for their project than anticipated and found that their initial plans for managing this information were inadequate. Some abandoned their collections while others faced the inadequacy of their information management strategies with resignation. When asked to design their ideal system for organizing and managing their information, participants in the study most commonly cited the need for greater integration of their information. Participants also often described the need for a system with human qualities an intelligent automated “helper” that would “magically” solve the challenges they face with the management of a personal information collection.