Personal Sphere - Information management in everyday life / EC Infoday 11.5.2009

EC Infoday 11.5.2009 / Personal Sphere – Information Management in Everyday Life / Kari-Hans Kommonen / Arki · Media Lab · TAIK 1
Personal Sphere
Information management
in everyday life
Kari-Hans Kommonen
Arki research group / Media Lab
University of Art and Design Helsinki TAIK
khk@taik.fi
http://arki.uiah.fi

Outline
- digitalization
- eMe
- ecosystems and practices
- users as designers
- opportunities in empowering users in the personal sphere

Evolution of the digital dimension

Touches all people, in all societies
Because of its high capability to deliver efficiency, digital systems
will pervade or influence all systems and structures in society and
play a big role in its changes.
All areas of human life, all people, in all societies, will be affected,
because their life is always touched by some systems and
structures that become more digital.
For example: money, trade, transport, media, locks, control,
identification, ... will become more digital. The more efficient
system replaces the old one. A realistic possibility to choose
between the old and new way disappears soon.

When systems become digital
- they operate on digital information
- they communicate
- they can be programmed, they are flexible
- they can report, store and manipulate
- the information can be moved anywhere
- flows tie components into systems, growing dependencies
- all activities generate data, a lot of it is stored – creates a
persistent existence

Digital existence – the eMe
- my devices and the information I maintain in them (e.g. my writings,
photos, - my memory)
- my representations in systems that I participate in (social media e.g.
facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace…)
- my representations in systems that know about me (Gmail, Google
Calendar, credit cards, healthcare, banks, tax authorities, …)
- my representations in the media and documentations created by
others (websites + Google etc.)
- my existence in sensor networks, telecom databases, security systems etc.

I am eMe
Increasingly, we need to operate through the eMe.
- email, sms, facebook required to participate in activities
- financial transactions require digital banking or credit card
payments
- without digital key we can not enter
- payment in bus with a digital travel card
- purchase from an online system
- every action leaves a trail

Controlling my existence
Today users have very limited access only to a part of their external
eMe, and typically in non-reusable format (e.g. printout,
sometimes as pdf, but not xml or semantic)
A lot of data is created about us that is important – how could
we get access? Should we have a say or control? Can we correct it
if it is wrong? Is the data safe? Do systems implement adequate
security? Are the authorized persons responsible?
Good discussion of privacy concerns: Daniel J. Solove: The Digital Person,
Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. New York University
Press, 2004

We also design our own eMe
- email signature
- blog
- flickr photostream
- nike plus
- facebook
- discussion fora
- twitter, qaiku
- dopplr

The Digital Ecosystem
Digital products live in ecosystems designed by their users.
Users are system integrators that take up new products and put them
into use in their practices.
Products can only be successful if they fit in well into the users’
practices and ecosystems; they can also become indispensable
building blocks for new practices.

Users as Designers
End users are the experts of their own lives and designers of their own
practices. The success of new digital products is often based on
their users’ ability to invent new social practices that rely on these
products.
>> The trend is to leverage the creativity of the users by
designing products and services to be designable – e.g. to be simple
to extend or to join with other products to create more
sophisticated new systems, that support new practices (e.g.
mashups)

Understanding the ecosystems and practices

Ecosystems and practices
What are the components of the personal digital ecosystem?
What are the practices that users have?
What information flows are important in this ecosystem?
What gaps in the ecosystem hinder the user’s interests?
What wishes does the user have for future applications?
How is this ecosystem connected to other digital ecosystems?
(social networks, enterprises, service offerings…)

Uses for information management
Managing one’s own daily life
Lifestreams, diary, sharing experiences, documenting life
Trading information about practices for benefits

R&D topics
- The information resources in the personal sphere are
dispersed across a variety of systems, services and formats that often
only communicate through a user interface – offering no or
only poor programmatic interface – with what tools could
users manage their information in integrated, comprehensive fashion?
- What kinds of concepts and tools would be the most natural
ones for people to be able to understand the essential things
about information management, access and disclosure management so
that they could manage them?
o Files, folders, tags, collections are not enough

R&D topics
- How do people understand concepts such as “disclosure
policy”, “preservation of privacy”, “accountability”, in practice?
- A growing concern for users is likely to be to get their data
from external servers to own systems, to be safe, archived, and
transferable to new services; the facilitation and management of
such export/import and backup is a backbone for other new
capabilities

R&D topics
- When the whole sphere of everyday life becomes tied to the same
information management systems, how complex models of the social
relationships and networks need to be supported to facilitate the
right kinds of access and sharing management?
- 3D interactive designable tools for personal information
management, browsing and organization, with intuitive
interactions (e.g. games, Wii) . e.g. “how did I use the money I
paid for food last month”, “How should I budget the
holiday?”

R&D topics
The topics would benefit from horizontal sense-making research, e.g.
- a multiplicity of open ended explorations on how people could
benefit from the kind of information and services this call
promises to make available

Reflection on the call
”systems that are accountable and privacy preserving by design”
- this is very important, and a big challenge
- what constitutes accountability and preservation of privacy?
- this also needs to be researched
- future scenario work is essential

information created from data collected from people’s activities is potentially
privacy threatening
- should people have access to it
- can they technically have access to it
- can they deny its use
- Daniel Solove proposes that this relationship should be
participatory and fiduciary

propositions for services now or soon available on websites are discouraged
- it should be noted that it constantly compromises end-users’
privacy to have to submit and maintain their private datasets
on commercial servers, where the data is often used in
undisclosed ways, for undisclosed purposes, and where users
have little security of sustainability and little effective and/or
juridical protection against potential service failures, hazards
and misuses
- new mechanisms for more distributed, less centralized social
networking would help alleviate these concerns

Discussion
Thank you!
Kari-Hans Kommonen, khk@taik.fi

Personal Sphere - Information management in everyday life / EC Infoday 11.5.2009

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