Open AccessPlanning personal projects and organizing personal information
Author(s) -
Jones William,
Bruce Harry,
Foxley Austin,
Munat Charles F.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.14504301159
Subject(s) - planner , personal information manager , personally identifiable information , plan (archaeology) , personal information management , computer science , knowledge management , product (mathematics) , work (physics) , information system , project management , world wide web , management information systems , engineering , mechanical engineering , geometry , computer security , mathematics , archaeology , systems engineering , electrical engineering , history , programming language
In a given week, an active person may be working on, or at least thinking about, several different projects. Some are work‐related (“prepare annual report”); others are not (“plan family ski vacation”). Projects have duration (several days to several months) and a structure that includes basic tasks (“book plane tickets”) and subprojects (“decide on hotel”). This article describes exploratory research that looks at the kinds of projects people manage in their daily lives, the problems they encounter and the kinds of support people need to manage better. The personal project is advanced as a tractable unit of analysis for the study of personal information management (PIM). Over time, a personal project often involves several forms of information (paper and digital documents, email, web pages, handwritten notes, etc.) and several supporting applications. People face problems of information fragmentation that are more widely experienced in their practice of PIM. A Project Planner prototype explores an exciting possibility that an effective, integrative organization of project‐related information can emerge as a natural by‐product of efforts to plan and structure the project.