=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Navigating the Personal Information Sphere
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-787/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-787
}}
==Navigating the Personal Information Sphere==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-787/paper8.pdf
Modiquitous 2011 Proceedings
Navigating the Personal Information Sphere
Simon Thiel Andreas Schuller Fabian Hermann
Fraunhofer IAO Fraunhofer IAO Fraunhofer IAO
Nobelstraße 12 Nobelstraße 12 Nobelstraße 12
70569 Stuttgart, Germany 70569 Stuttgart, Germany 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
ABSTRACT Approach
A major trend in information society is integration of General approach of di.me project describes the
personal information from different sources. Digital data development of a userware consisting of a private service
about persons, their behavior, their content and their social and several clients for accessing it. The private service can
structure is merged into the personal information sphere; a be installed on a private server or hosted at a third-party
multi-dimensional space containing information related to a (e.g. cloud-) provider. The user can access the private
person. In the research project di.me1, funded by the EC, a service via the di.me client running on his desktop
userware is developed to support the user managing it's computer or by using a mobile application.
personal sphere on multiple platforms.
Personal Information Sphere
Main requirement for the userware is to help the user Core concept in di.me is the Personal Information Sphere
keeping an overview on his personal data, while giving a (PS). The metaphor of a sphere (Figure 1) containing
powerful tool for changing all kind of aspects, like e.g. references to all information related to a person has been
changing access rights, merging information from different established in previous projects of Fraunhofer IAO
sources and structure it according to his mental model. For [Schu09]. Information in the PS is structured along a
this an easy to understand, but rich visualization of semantic model containing meta-information about each
information and relations is required. A user-interface information artifact. The meta-information covers classical
concept describes, how a user can navigate through his elements (e.g. known from file systems) like access rights,
information sphere and which artifacts support managing it. information about the owner, date-of-creation and date-of-
This paper describes the user-interface concept within the last-edit. But also further history information about changes
di.me userware, giving special focus on navigation and of ownership is assigned to the artifact. In the semantic
visualization of the personal information sphere. model the concepts (e.g. information artifacts) are
interlinked by relations. These give indication about
Keywords instance, composition, aggregation, or general association
Personal Information Sphere, Context-Awareness, relationship between two concepts. For management of the
Intelligent User Interfaces, Augmented Identity personal information sphere, it’s important to categorize
and cluster the user’s information artifacts. Humans require
structure to control and oversee large amounts of
INTRODUCTION
information artifacts. This structure can be predefined
Social networks play an increasing role in the online
following some reasonable default categorization or can be
community. To stay connected with colleagues, friends and
defined by the user following his mental model. In the best
family (multiple) accounts on various social network
case a general default structure can be expanded and
platforms are quite common. Keeping track on the various
adapted by the user. This higher level of abstraction the
accounts, updates and changes, however becomes more and
user reaches by categorization enables him to control larger
more difficult. One goal of di.me is to integrate several of
amounts of artifacts, keeping track of granted permissions
these platforms into one personal information sphere that is
and navigating through his data.
controlled by the user. Assembling the profile information
with files and information stored locally on the desktop
helps to compile a rich semantic model of the user’s
personal information sphere. An easy to use, multi platform
user interface enables the user to manage his personal
sphere and to keep control on the information he shares.
1
di.me = "digital.me: Userware for the Intelligent,
Intuitive, and Trust-Enhancing Management of the User s
Personal Information Sphere in Digital and Social
Environments" Figure 1: di.me Personal Information Sphere
S. Thiel, A. Schuller, F. Hermann: Navigating the Personal Information Sphere. Proc. of 1st 51
International Workshop on Model-based Interactive Ubiquitous System 2011, Pisa, Italy, June 13, 2011,
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-787
Modiquitous 2011 Proceedings
A straight forward representation of this categorization can • Organizing persons in groups: adding persons to
be implemented by establishing concepts for each category groups, splitting groups, merging groups, etc.
(or tag) aggregating the referring information artifacts or
• Organizing information objects in Information
sub categories. Details about the implementation of the
Categories, e.g. via tagging: adding information
di.me semantic model are beyond the scope of this paper
objects to categories, merging categories, splitting
and will be discussed in separate publications. For
categories, structure categories, etc.
describing the user interface, two lines of categorization are
of particular interest: Categorization of persons or contacts • Detection of not yet specified situations
into “Groups” and categorization of content and profile • Sharing information objects/categories with peers/
information objects as “Information Categories”. (Figure 2) groups
• Disclose or hide status updates
To produce these kinds of recommendation, the semantic
model in di.me is required to provide semantic for all
information objects, categories, groups and situations. In a
continuous process the recommendation engine is reasoning
on the various aspects of the personal information sphere
and produces recommendations accordingly.2
Figure 2: Conceptualization of UI-concepts
Sharing the Personal Information Sphere
di.me supports mechanisms for sharing information with
persons known to the user. To give the user maximum
flexibility in defining, who should be able to access a
specific resource on the one hand, but on the other hand
provide functionality for rich structuring and reach a high
usability, the sharing mechanism allows for sharing Figure 3: Categories and Access Rules
information objects to single persons, but also supports
sharing whole categories to groups (see Figure 3).
Integration of Services
However, it’s clear that assigning single pieces of
information to single persons will lead to a strong Internet communities are broadly using social networks
fragmentation of the access model and there is a high risk with many platforms [Bloch10], according to [Meek10] the
for the user to loose track of the permissions granted. usage of social networking exceeds the usage of email since
Therefore one challenge for the UI-concept is to encourage 2009. A main target for di.me userware is to provide a
the user using groups and categories for setting access platform for integration of existing user accounts for many
rights. Also the system should come up with suggestions social network platforms. For this, external services can be
about rearranging existing groups, creating new groups or accessed via di.me. Personal information provided on a
to aggregate a set of information objects in a new social network platform is presented as part of the personal
Information Category. information sphere in di.me. To avoid redundancy and
provide convenient synchronization, artifacts like name,
Recommendations from di.me address, etc., relevant on many platforms are automatically
Helping the user to structure his personal information merged and can be managed in a single place. It’s clear that
sphere is one application of recommendations coming from not all external platforms support APIs for editing data, but
the system. Central concept of di.me userware is to wherever it is available, automatic updates of personal
establish a powerful tool, enforcing the user to manage his information should be provided.
personal data and avoiding to restrict the user’s actions. So
Another aspect of social third-party services is that they
the system will not change (the structure) of the PS
provide a rich variety of channels for communication. A
proactively, but give recommendation that the user is free to
concept of di.me is to support communication with a person
accept, adapt or deny. Within his daily schedule a user will
by use of the known channels shared with this person. An
typically have some time-slots, when he for example enjoys
example: As a result of merging his Skype contacts with
browsing his social networks, sorting persons into groups
di.me, Max knows that Peter is reachable via Skype,
and photos into categories. So, recommendations don’t
however he also knows Peter’s email address. So, when
force themselves to the user, but are supporting him when
there is time for it.
2
di.me gives recommendations regarding to aspects as Details about this recommendation engine will also be
follows: subject of further publications.
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Modiquitous 2011 Proceedings
sending a message to Peter, Max get’s the choice: whether Implementation
he wants to send it via Skype or email it. The di.me project started in November 2010. Therefore
development is still in a conceptual phase. However, UI
prototypes showing approaches for navigation and
Personal History visualization have been developed and will be introduced in
For all external services di.me is able to access, it will also the following section. The di.me approach covers clients for
capture status information and messages or updates coming desktop and mobile devices. Within this paper, navigation
in. The presentation of these updates is the central entry aspects will be shown for a mobile scenario, while an
point for the user. These updates (form the system or from example for visualization of the personal history is given
other users) are shown on the home view of di.me. An for a desktop context.
implementation of such a view has to provide rich filtering
options to give the user control on which information to be Navigation
displayed. Filtering is not only to be done manually, but For mobile application development of di.me client is
generally set according to the situation the system subject technical restrictions: The client has to comply with
recognizes. (Recognition of situations will be explained in limited processing power and a rather small display. Thus
the following paragraph.) Depending on the filter setting the UI is required to restrict each view to a minimum
some of the updates won’t be displayed when incoming. number of details shown at a time. Nevertheless, the
However, all incoming updates are stored in the personal challenge is to give the user as much (useful) information as
history. The history is a timeline that refers to updates and possible. So, the mobile scenario is most interesting from a
events collected by di.me. So, di.me provides a view to UI-design perspective.
browse and search the personal history. Again, rich filtering For the main navigation of the di.me client six items and
and sorting options allow following different aspects of correlating top-level views have been specified: (Figure 4)
personal history. Such aspects can be persons,
• Home
communication channels or abstract life spheres. Filtering
can also take place according to situations. • MySphere
• People
Context Sensitive UI & Situations • Timeline
For further control of the client behavior in di.me, particular • Situations
in the mobile context, the client is able to perceive
environmental and activity information, which is assembled • Settings
in the user’s personal context. Following rules set up by Since, on a smart phone, the display size is quite restricted,
default or specified by the user, situations are derived from “Situations” and “Settings” are reachable via a “more”
life content information. These situations and particularly menu item.
the change of situations are a source for triggering multiple The Home view serves as navigation cockpit for the di.me
reactions in di.me. The change of situation may cause the client application. It consists of two views “Updates” and
system to: “Tips”, where by default the updates view is shown when
• Change the configuration of updates shown to the the application gets activated. Depending on the (filter)
user, and how they will be alerted settings and the situation currently detected, the scope of
• Update specified contacts about this situation updates to be shown is determined. Each of the updates
change. shown in the list can be selected to see more details of the
update, containing the full text, the sender as well as some
• Update external services about change of situation. timestamp. This detail view also serves as starting point to
(E.g. a service tracking persons and showing jump to the senders profile or to give direct reply on the
people around.) update. In the “Tips” view, recommendations coming from
• Provide access to information to specified persons the di.me system get displayed. Selecting a tip again opens
or groups. a detailed view on the recommendation. Here the user can
chose to follow (accept) the recommendation, adapt or
• Show recommendations about potential actions.
ignore it.
Following the specified rules, the user interface adapts
according to changes of the situation recognized. This
mainly concerns the set of data accessible to the user. The
recommendation feature allows for interacting with the
user. The simple principle of: suggestion, accept, adapt and
deny, lays a basis for improving the recommendation
mechanism by reinforcement learning technologies.
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Modiquitous 2011 Proceedings
In Situations the user is able to control and define the
situations recognized and to specify the client’s behavior
accordingly.
Timeline shows a simple visualization of the personal
history quite similar to a calendar application.
Visualization
The UI design for the desktop client of di.me adopts the
look and feel that was introduced with the mobile platform.
Also the main menu is structured following the six main
menu items. Since the design of the navigation is not very
much restricted, on the desktop challenges for visualization
are of particular interest. As an example this paragraph
introduces the visualization of the personal history
(Timeline) on the desktop UI.
Figure 4: Home-Screen (Design Prototype)
As discussed in the approach, recommendations can contain
a suggestion to restructure the groups of a personal
information sphere. Managing groups on a small display
can easily become a confusing task. When showing the
people view, the user can switch into management mode by
turning the phone by 90 degrees. (Figure 5) In this view, the
landscape format is split into two columns showing persons
and groups at the same time. The user can now perform
drag and drop operations to add persons to groups or
remove them accordingly. Filter mechanisms for both
columns can be set separately, reducing number of persons
and groups respectively shown in the lists. This
management view is provided also for structuring
information categories for the view MySphere. Figure 6: Visualization of History (Design Prototype)
As described previously, di.me userware is collecting
incoming updates and upcoming events in the personal
history. Updates are coming from various sources and over
time a vast amount of items get collected. Providing an easy
to use, intuitive UI for browsing such a history is one main
challenge for visualization in di.me.
Figure 6 shows the current design prototype for
visualization of the personal history. The timescale is
shown on the bottom of the page, zoomed in the middle to
the highest granularity selected. When approaching the
Figure 5: Organizing Groups (Design Prototype) borders of the view, the timescale is zoomed out, showing a
whole year as a horizon. Swim lanes with horizontal
MySphere allows the user to browse and search the orientation describe groups that have been senders or
personal information sphere. Again, rich filtering receivers of communication acts (updates received/sent).
mechanisms allow for reducing the amount of information Bubbles situated within these swim lanes indicate acts of
shown in this view. On the top of the view a search field communication sharing a close semantic relationship. The
allows for searching arbitrary information objects or user can browse through the history by scrolling right or
categories. left, zoom in and out at the current position, select a topic to
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Modiquitous 2011 Proceedings
follow it through his history or jump into a bubble to read have been discussed on the example of visualizing the
the details of each update. personal history on the desktop platform.
Related Work ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Related work for di.me can be found in many different The research leading to these results has received funding
aspects. Social network mash-up tools are a fast evolving from the European Union Seventh Framework Program
field with some prominent examples. Diaspora [Diaspora] (FP7/2007- 2013) under grant agreement n° 257787
providing the possibility of hosting personal data on a
private server shares some general ideas with di.me. Other
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