Eshant Gour

Personal Information Management(PIM) is a series of tasks through which users create, obtain, systematise information and retrieve it in all its completeness for later use. With the advent of technology there is a increased and widespread use of PIM tools, both for personal and professional use. The more the different format(emails, notes, tasks, etc.) of information to which a user is exposed, more the complexity of maintaining the information. This is in turn complicates the information retrieval process that might lead to loss of resources like time and effort. Digitary was introduced to overcome this complexity and improve the information retrieval process.

Digitary is a web application that allows users to create associations between different information types. Digitary stores user's emails, tasks, notes and and the bi-directional associations between these entities. Digitary is still an early prototype, thus it is important to assess it with a detailed evaluation study.

The study reports in-detail evaluation of Digitary which proceeds in three ways: (1) To identify test participants information organising strategies (2) To evaluate the usability of Digitary and (2) To investigate Digitary's performance and behaviour over time through remote role-based testing. The usability test was performed with the think aloud experiment which is an effective way of collecting the qualitative and quantitative data about the application. From the usability tests, it was observed that the prototype still have a lot usability issues and lacks in pragmatic quality. Besides, the role- based testing where the test participants were separated over space and time helped in identifying the errors and problems that were not registered during the usability tests. This also helped in analysing how the application responds in a long run with the information space getting occupied with increasing information. Furthermore, the study also provides design recommendations formulated by test participants' responses and also proposes new components for Digitary. Test participant's feedbacks show that they are open to using a new PIM only if it comes with improved functionalities. The role-based testing results expand our insight into user's PIM behaviour and help improving Digitary, both in pragmatic and hedonic qualities.