Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to Support PIM

The proper and immediate object of science, is the acquirement, or communication, of truth […]
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Definitions of Poetry, 1811

Inspired by the quote here i intend to publish my Masters thesis. The title of my Masters’ Thesis is: “Cognitive Aspects of Semantic Desktop to Support Personal Information Management“. It is submitted now at the Institute of Cognitive Science.

Many thanks to Leo Sauermann for his close supervision, constant support and valuable inputs to realize the work.

The abstract :

This thesis examines issues on Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Science and Mental Models. The research provides a philosophical grounding for the researchers in Personal Information Management (PIM). An overview is given on various philosophical aspects of computer-based activities. Discussions on the theories relevant to understand the goals for the Semantic Desktop community are elicited. The ideas discussed in the thesis are intended to emphasize a theoretical foundation, with respect to the Semantic Desktop long term goals. The goal of this thesis is to examine the theories of Philosophy and to provide a conceptual idea to design user-intuitive Semantic Desktop applications. The challenges of the Semantic Desktop evaluation are highlighted and suggestions are made based on Gnowsis evaluation. The work tries to induce scientific curiosity among the Semantic Desktop researchers.

Download as [ pdf ] size ~1 MB

See related publications

bei Universität des Saarlandes als Zweithörer

mehr als DFKI mitarbeiter, zur Zeit habe ich auch bei Universität des Saarlandes angemeldet. In Deutschland, koennen die Studenten von anderer Hochschulen als Zweithörer zum Besuch von Lehrveranstaltungen für das Studium eines weiteren Studienganges anmelden.

The myth of my Research

…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:

1. 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”.
2. Evaluation of PIM is challenging, major issues involve privacy and users different world-view.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Creativity Support Tools: A Grand Challenge

… I have just been to a talk given by [Prof.Ben Schneiderman] here at [DFKI] on the issues of Creativity needed in comtemporary software tools, so far Software has been a productivity support tools, he emphasized on embedding improved usability and creativity within the software.The terms he used for developing Software supporting Creativity features should have

less Threshold (easy to use or start with )

high Ceiling ( Should have much support for Creativity in terms of usabilty and visualizations)

wide Wall ( wide applicability of domains and support for domain experts)

Evaluation of Creative research tools are difficult, he comments "controlled studies are inappropriate and brief case studies are not adequate". A proposal for Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case-studies (MILC) is suggested.

Overall his talk gave a thought provoking impressions with big picture and a vision for Creativity research methods needed for future Software tools.

his talk slides [here]

…indian food at DFKI

…lunch at [DFKI] with indian recipes, it is worth mentioning here, it took 3 days in planning, a day long preparations, 2 hours of shopping and 5 hours of cooking…

DFKI kicks Fraunhofer

…Today I watched [DFKI] winning 3:1 against Fraunhofer Institute [IESE] in Football.Much thrill could be sensed in second half of the game, when 2 spectacular goals were made by dfki team, offcourse some credit goes to pro-DFKI wind 🙂

[short video]

Can Computers Think

… many ethical issues for thinking machines,some interesting philosophical brainstorming.If you want to know the details of the mentioned issues FOCUS here

I captured the following snap from demo poster at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence at Saarbrücken,Germany.

WSPI 2006 dfki Saarbruecken

…for two days I received many food for thoughts and also for belly:), I was in WSPI ’06 workshop at DFKI Saarbrücken

I had a nice time spent meeting people and talking on different issues and challenges in Information era,from services to Science,the idea was to pack together Philosophers and Computer Scientists in Alan Turing room at dfki saarbrücken and see who convinces whom. The debate was heated but never led to conclusion, at least many of interesting ideas emerged …

some smart words from Barry Smith I specially like to jot down, at times he was too explicit that he never hesitated to say the Computer Scientists as “teenagers“, interestingly funny.

But he made the room to ponder on many coherent ideas and science of system (be it formal or non-formal)

some of Barry’s words :

” Semantic Web missing to raise the Standard of Ontology”

” High quality shared Ontologies build Communities”

” Instances are not represented in Scientific Ontology, Why ? …. notion of instances is different in Ontology than the notion of instances in programming languages”

” Human brain is highly flexible but computers are not”

my point in conclusion would be that No thinking, No Consciousness are involved in Computers it’s only a play of words and a hype from Sci-Fi.

Computers are only helpful machines,which should be intelligently designed to be usable and that behaves according to the user’s demand.

some pictures from the Workshop Event

Short Video

…at Gnowsis : Semantic Desktop Hack Workshop 2006,DFKI Kaiserslautern

…As planned, today i was among SemDesk Hackers for Gnowsis [A desktop application based on RDF to view the hype of Semantic Web Technologies on Personal Computers : A tool to better organise your personal resources on desktop computers].

nice time to meet smart peoples who are quite eager to smoke Semantic Desktop and encourage others to get addicted in Gnowsis 🙂

starting with Leo's talk on Introducing the Gnowsis, Dominik Heim followed and gave a cool demo of Semantic Wiki enhancements in Gnowsis 0.9 (beta)[download],food at Mensa was well served on chip card.

…Semantic Desktop idea is based on visualizing your organisation of work, categorising your thoughts in personalised ontology and making you smart in work efficiency

…here is my philosophy to support semantic Desktop idea,

• basically we as human,are both social and individual in different contexts,wouldn't it be nice to know about ourself [metacognition] and evolve from experiences of our behaviour in different contexts,the more i know about myself the better i organise myself,what if this is realised in Gnowsis: whose idea is to provide a better platform for personalised Ontology right on your desktop.
• my way of learning and memorizing a new concept is through association and collaboration,the more i associate myself the better i organise myself,does it work the same for you ? if yes,then get addicted to personal organisation,visualize your mental model,know your social and personal contexts,make your Personalised IM Ontology and be smart :Gnowsis keeps this vision.
• my ideas are a bit exaggerated but not impractical "Usability increases metacognition" and "metacognition makes you more intelligent"

…this world needs smart people atleast for Godly reasons 🙂

..so wait we are not finished yet ,two more days to work together,sharing ideas and hack together to make things work together

Pictures here

DFKI Kaiserslautern

…had some nice meeting with people at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Kaiserslautern.nice food at Mensa and nice hospitability by Leo.

…Soon looking forward to work with Leo Sauermann,whose initial impression to me being industrious,intelligent and imaginative,a cool supervisor for my Diplomthesis on NEPOMUK at DFKI Kaiserslautern.