Towards a dynamic multiscale personal information space: Beyond application and document centered views of information

TY - GEN

T1 - Towards a dynamic multiscale personal information space

T2 - 4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Programming 2020

AU - Fox, Amy Rae

AU - Guo, Philip

AU - Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted

AU - Dalsgaard, Peter

AU - Satyanarayan, Arvind

AU - Xia, Haijun

AU - Hollan, James D.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - The historical moment when a person worked in front of a single computer has passed. Computers are now ubiquitous and embedded in virtually every new device and system, connecting our personal and professional activities to ever-expanding information resources with previously unimaginable computational power. Yet with all the increases in capacity, speed, and connectivity, our experiences too often remain difficult, awkward, and frustrating. Even after six decades of design evolution there is little of the naturalness and contextual sensitivity required for convivial interaction with computer-mediated information. We envision a future in which the existing world of documents and applications is linked to a multiscale personalized information space in which dynamic visual entities behave in accordance with cognitively motivated rules sensitive to tasks, personal and group interaction histories, and context. The heart of the project is to rethink the nature of computer-mediated information as a basis to begin to fully realize the potential of computers to assist information-based activities. This requires challenging fundamental presuppositions that have led to today's walled gardens and information silos. Our goal is to catalyze an international research community to rethink the nature of information as a basis for radically advancing the human-centered design of information-based work and helping to ensure the future is one of convivial, effective, and humane systems. In this paper, we propose a new view of information systems, discuss cognitive requirements for a human-centered information space, and sketch a research agenda and approach.

AB - The historical moment when a person worked in front of a single computer has passed. Computers are now ubiquitous and embedded in virtually every new device and system, connecting our personal and professional activities to ever-expanding information resources with previously unimaginable computational power. Yet with all the increases in capacity, speed, and connectivity, our experiences too often remain difficult, awkward, and frustrating. Even after six decades of design evolution there is little of the naturalness and contextual sensitivity required for convivial interaction with computer-mediated information. We envision a future in which the existing world of documents and applications is linked to a multiscale personalized information space in which dynamic visual entities behave in accordance with cognitively motivated rules sensitive to tasks, personal and group interaction histories, and context. The heart of the project is to rethink the nature of computer-mediated information as a basis to begin to fully realize the potential of computers to assist information-based activities. This requires challenging fundamental presuppositions that have led to today's walled gardens and information silos. Our goal is to catalyze an international research community to rethink the nature of information as a basis for radically advancing the human-centered design of information-based work and helping to ensure the future is one of convivial, effective, and humane systems. In this paper, we propose a new view of information systems, discuss cognitive requirements for a human-centered information space, and sketch a research agenda and approach.

KW - activity history

KW - co-adaptive systems

KW - cognitive tools

KW - distributed cognition

KW - dynamic media

KW - human computer interaction

KW - information visualization

KW - instrumental paradigm

KW - Vega-Lite

KW - Webstrates

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090159862&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/3397537.3397542

DO - 10.1145/3397537.3397542

M3 - Article in proceedings

AN - SCOPUS:85090159862

SP - 136

EP - 143

BT - Programming '20

A2 - Aguiar, Ademar

A2 - Chiba, Shigeru

A2 - Boix, Elisa Gonzalez

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

CY - New York

Y2 - 23 March 2020 through 26 March 2020

ER -