Creating user interfaces that entice people to manage better information

  • Authors:

  • David R. Karger

  • Affiliations:

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 20th ACM international conference on Information and knowledge management
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Much research in information management begins by asking how to manage a given information corpus. But information management systems can only be as good as the information they manage. They struggle and often fail to correctly infer meaning from large blobs of text and the mysterious actions and demands of users. And they are useless for managing information that is never captured. Instead of accepting the existing information as an immutable condition, I will argue that there are significant opportunities to help and motivate people to improve the quality and quantity of information their tools manage, and to exploit that better information to benefit its users. The greatest challenge in doing so is developing systems, and particularly user interfaces, that overcome humans' perverse reluctance to invest small present-moment effort for large future payoffs. Effective systems must minimize the effort needed to record high-quality information and maximize the perceived future benefits of that information investment. I will support these ideas with examples covering structured data management and presentation, notetaking, collaborative filtering, and social media.