…I am currently fixated with my Masters Thesis entitled: [Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to support Personal Information Management]. It is challenging though interesting.
the main research motivation is based on the following questions :
- Does Semantic Desktop minimizes information overload by providing enhanced support to perform daily task of knowledge worker?
- Does it help in organising (personal) information, the way we think with respect to our working context?
- Does it able to formalize our mental models?
- Can we query and visualize our personal information resources (emails, files, contacts, photos) with the help of Semantic Desktop to know our meetings, schedules and tasks in order to organise ourselves better?
After realizing that Evaluation of Semantic Desktop remains still in its infancy and needs high attention, I don’t find any publications addressing the usability issues of Semantic Desktop. But now I am delighted to see some latest focus in Personal Information Management (PIM) research. The research has gained momentum with around 32 publications this year [look here] is quite interesting and for me it’s a light of hope that my current research efforts have some audience to appeal. My position to defend my work could be summed up briefly as follows:
- PIM is not uniform or structuralised behaviour rather it is dynamic, diverse and flexible, based on context. PIM behaviour has to be studied in particular context (e.g. working, education, projects, research ). The strategy to study PIM behaviour would involve “divide and conquer”.
- Evaluation of PIM is challenging, major issues involve privacy and users different world-view.
- Understanding Mental Model, which is a hint (clue) in peoples mind to the concept they represent. In physical sense they may represent an operation of a device, In abstract sense they may represent system process. Mental Model could be used to explicitly define user working scenario to study her PIM activity.
- Representing Mental model in [PIMO] as proposed by my scientific advisor Leo Sauermann or [CDS] as proposed by Max and Heiko : where mental model needs to be formalised, they should serve as an analytical tool that should provide features to document user’s current mental images, ideas and concepts.
Danzinde 