An Exploratory Study of Calendar Use

In this paper, we report on findings from an ethnographic study of how people use their calendars for personal information management (PIM). Our participants were faculty, staff and students who were not required to use or contribute to any specific calendaring solution, but chose to do so anyway. The study was conducted in three parts: first, an initial survey provided broad insights into how calendars were used; second, this was followed up with personal interviews of a few participants which were transcribed and content-analyzed; and third, examples of calendar artifacts were collected to inform our analysis. Findings from our study include the use of multiple reminder alarms, the reliance on paper calendars even among regular users of electronic calendars, and wide use of calendars for reporting and life-archival purposes. We conclude the paper with a discussion of what these imply for designers of interactive calendar systems and future work in PIM research.

[1]  Bonnie A. Nardi,et al.  Finding and reminding: file organization from the desktop , 1995, SGCH.

[2]  A. Roger Kaye,et al.  Electronic calendars in the office: an assessment of user needs and current technology , 1985, TOIS.

[3]  Paul Dourish,et al.  Information and context: lessons from the study of two shared information systems , 1993, COCS '93.

[4]  Jochen Rode,et al.  You've Got Mail! Calendar, Weather and More: Customizable Phone Access to Personal Information , 2004 .

[5]  Kenton O'Hara,et al.  Dealing with mobility: understanding access anytime, anywhere , 2001, TCHI.

[6]  Jonathan Grudin.  A case study of calendar use in an organization , 1996, SIGO.

[7]  Mark H. Chignell,et al.  Information archiving with bookmarks: personal Web space construction and organization , 1998, CHI.

[8]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Calendars on the new frontier: challenges of groupware technology , 1998 .

[9]  Susan T. Dumais,et al.  Introduction to keeping, refinding and sharing personal information , 2008, TOIS.

[10]  Jonathan Grudin,et al.  Why Groupware Succeeds: Discretion or Mandate? , 1995, ECSCW.

[11]  William Jones,et al.  Finders, keepers? The present and future perfect in support of personal information management , 2004, First Monday.

[12]  Leysia Palen,et al.  Social, individual and technological issues for groupware calendar systems , 1999, CHI '99.

[13]  Jock D. Mackinlay,et al.  Developing calendar visualizers for the information visualizer , 1994, UIST '94.

[14]  M. Angela Sasse,et al.  "Stuff goes into the computer and doesn't come out": a cross-tool study of personal information management , 2004, CHI.

[15]  Tom Rodden,et al.  Informing the Development of Calendar Systems for Domestic Use , 2003, ECSCW.

[16]  Eric Horvitz,et al.  Principles of mixed-initiative user interfaces , 1999, CHI '99.

[17]  Christena Nippert-Eng,et al.  Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work” , 1996 .

[18]  Stephen J. Payne,et al.  Understanding Calendar Use , 1993, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[19]  A. Chapanis,et al.  How professional persons keep their calendars: Implications for computerization , 1982 .

[20]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[21]  William Jones.  Personal Information Management , 2007, Annu. Rev. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[22]  Catherine C. Marshall,et al.  Saving and using encountered information: implications for electronic periodicals , 2005, CHI.

[23]  Erik T. Mueller.  A calendar with common sense , 2000, IUI '00.

[24]  Wayne G. Lutters,et al.  Understanding the micronote lifecycle: improving mobile support for informal note taking , 2004, CHI.

[25]  Candace L. Sidner,et al.  Email overload: exploring personal information management of email , 1996, CHI.

[26]  David B. Beard,et al.  A visual calendar for scheduling group meetings , 1990, CSCW '90.

[27]  Manfred Tscheligi,et al.  CHI '04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2004, CHI 2004.

[28]  Lawrence A. Gordon,et al.  Information overload: A temporal approach☆ , 1990 .

[29]  Janet Vertesi,et al.  To have and to hold: exploring the personal archive , 2006, CHI.

[30]  Joe Tullio,et al.  Augmenting shared personal calendars , 2002, UIST '02.

[31]  Mary Czerwinski,et al.  DateLens: A fisheye calendar interface for PDAs , 2004, TCHI.

[32]  Harry Bruce,et al.  Don't take my folders away!: organizing personal information to get ghings done , 2005, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[33]  Jonathan Grudin,et al.  Discretionary Adoption of Group Support Software: Lessons from Calendar Applications , 2003, Implementing Collaboration Technologies in Industry.