SEREFE: serendipitous file exchange between users and devices

At work and at play, people need access to the right information, and they frequently need to share that information with others. While current tools such as electronic mail and USB flash drives provide powerful mechanisms for managing and sharing information, they too often require that users anticipate what information they might share (e.g. so they have it on their flash drive) and when they might share it (e.g. so they bring the flash drive with them). These tools thus provide excellent support for planned sharing but inadequate support for serendipitously sharing digital information with others. In this paper we discuss eight design goals that a successful system for serendipitous sharing should meet, and we present SEREFE, a new architecture for SEREndipitous File Exchange that we designed to meet those goals. SEREFE extends an instant messaging architecture to allow users to use any of their devices, including a cell phone, to share information stored on any of their devices with other users or to copy it to another of their devices. We describe the SEREFE user experience, implementation, and initial evaluation results.