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. 52 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. 53 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 54 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. 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