Perspectives inPersonal Knowledge Management

"Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself" Peter Drucker, 1909-2005Jack Davis

University of WashingtonCSS 497 – Individual ProjectProfessor Mark Kochanski – Faculty AdvisorGordon Watanabe and Patrick Butler Monterde – Sponsors

Project MotivationExplore current and new approaches forpersonal information and knowledge management.

How do I:Manage Information Overload.

Keep Found Things Found.

Efficiently Task Switch Between Projects

Identify automated processes to simplifyand improve personal productivity.

Project Goals and ObjectivesI want to learn:How do people currently use Personal

Information Management (PIM) and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) today?

How might people better use PIM and PKM in the future?

What are some of the technical and usability issues surrounding PIM and PKM?

What are the qualities of products that earn brand buzz and a loyal customer following?

Prototype a background service with an extensible architecture to support anarray of personal assistant plug-ins.

Quickly locate and open commonly useddocuments, folders, and web pages.

Quickly locate and recall items that I’veidentified and saved for future reference.

Synchronize updated documents and filesacross multiple machines and locations.

Insert blocks of commonly used boilerplate content.

Project PlanHow do I get there?

Why Personal Knowledge Management?

General Categories:Global / Community – “Global Search”Enterprise / Organization – “Social Search”Personal / Individual – “Recall” / “Retrieve”The issue of “what’s in it for me?”

Least Studied − Potentially the largest area for productivity improvement.

Discoveries (1)What I learned along the way

Data à Information à Knowledge

“Knowledge = information in action”

A “Language”Information-Items (the “opposable thumb”)

Keeping Activities

Organizing Activities

Searching and Seeking

Re-Finding: Teleporting and Orienteering

Behaviors: Piling and Filing

Discoveries (2)What I learned along the way

“Keeping” Processes

Keep Nothing, Keep Everything, Keep Smarter

Organization ChallengesVaried ApproachesInconsistent ApproachesFragmentation Complications

Form, Miscategorization, Device, Location

Discoveries (3)What I learned along the way

Trends and Challenges

Minimal Effort

Multiple Organizations

Inconsistency over time

The “Disorganization Threshold”

Better Ways to Organize

The Challenge of “Search”

Factors in Filing, Searching, and Tagging

Discoveries (4)What I learned along the way

Personal Task Management

Additional factors effect task switchingType of task, complexity of task, task duration,length of absence, number of interruptions

But there are many commonalitiesInformation keeping makes deferrable actions of information-items.

Task keeping makes deferrable actions of tasks.

Identification and Locator TechnologiesURIs, URLs, IRIs, URNs, XRIs, DOIs, PermalinksPURLS

Content ManagementMy Big-Arse Text File (Cornell)

Living in Text Files (Turbull)

Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks (O'Brien)

FlatFileAdvantages (PmWiki)

XML

Semantic WebResource Description Framework (RDF)

Key TechnologiesWhat I learned along the way

Products qualities that drive brand buzz and loyal followings

Five key requirementsPerformance

Usability

Security

Reliability

Compatibility

How do I build products that sizzle?

The most common unmet user needs are Performance, Usability, and Security

Product qualities that drive brand buzz and loyal followings

The Kano Model

What might an enhancedpersonal assistant tool look like?Perform basic PIM/PKM functionsSynchronize documents, files, and folders across multiple locations.

Provide workflow, project, and in-contextviews of related information.

Re-find documents and files based onpersonal tags and metadata.

Encrypt documents and files for privacy.

Digitally sign documents and files for security.

Challenge for the 21st Century“The greatest management challenge of the 21st century – to improve the effectiveness and productivity of knowledge workers – is not even close to being met” Peter Drucker (1909-2005)

Questions?

Products qualities that drive brand buzz and loyal followingsPerformance | Usability | Security | Reliability | Compatibility

“Innovations have to be handled by ordinary human beings, and if they are to attain any size or importance at all, by morons or near-morons. Incompetence, after all is the only thing in abundant and never-failing supply. Anything too clever, whether in design or execution, is almost bound to fail.” Peter Drucker (1919-2005), Innovation and Entrepreneurship