What Chandler is and isn't

• Chander is a PIM: Personal Information Manager
• Chandler is a platform for an integrated General Information Manager: Documents, Photos, Music
• Chandler is not a feature list or a set of tools for getting things done (ie. toolbar)
• Chandler is a way of getting things done
• Chandler is a way to manage your life information
• More of an approach to life, less of a diet pill

Chandler Vocabulary

• Item: a discrete piece of information
• Collection: a grouping of pieces of information
• Attributes: a characteristic of a piece of information
• Kinds: a type of information or a grouping of attributes

• Kind is to Goat as Attribute is to Horns.

Chandler the PIM

Most focus on Chandler as a PIM not a GIM. Though many of the principles that we'll talk about today apply to Chandler as a GIM, but for now you'll have to use your imagination to figure out how Chandler might integrate management of documents, media, news, etc...into the same kind of hopefully seemless workflows we've designed for Chandler the PIM.

Overview

1. Describe our mission conceptually in terms of what we're trying to accomplish and what challenges we must overcome to reach our goals. (wrt Design)
2. More specific diagnosis of what's wrong with PIMs today
3. Specific solutions

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Recurring theme: The silo problem and the compartmentalization of your data:

Breaking down the literal DIGITAL DIVIDE so you can

1. See the big picture
2. Control your data

Current world of software is applications as tools.

• Email tool for communicating
• Calendar tool for scheduling
• Taskpad for tracking todos
• Notepad for jotting down ideas
• Contacts manager for keeping track of information about people
• apps_as_tools.gif:
  

And these tools are designed so as to optimize for the functions of that tool

• So they can be reliable
• And fast

So in this way, modern applications are like band-aid solutions as opposed to a more holistic approach to medicine.

• They're goal is to treat symptoms (ie. I don't have a way to get your this information. I need someway to track due dates. How can I see a schedule of all of my appointments?) NOT
• To ensure general health. To ensure that I Get Things Done
• Often times, treating one set of symptoms without truly healing the patient means that the illness just manifests in other ways and sometimes the treatment itself causes side-effect symptoms...
• bandaid.gif:
  

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This is because computers are basically autistic

• they take things literally
• require explicit instructions
• get lost in the details
• and as a result, fail to see the big picture or gestalt
• and Get Things Done is a big picture or squishy concept
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• Instead you might see this. A more literal interpretation of the painting: How many red dots are in the painting?

This is why computers are bad at

• Image recognition: how do you describe a face in definitive terms...sometimes we can't even recognize people we know in photographs
• Spam
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Because we're bad at it too, as when Justic Potter Stewart said of pornography in 1964: I know it when I see it. It's because these kinds of things are subjective, they defy definition.

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Article in the New York Times about the use of a diagnosis of *evil* in psychiatry.

• As part of an extensive, in-depth interview, a trained examiner rates the offender on a 20-item personality test. The items include glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity. The subjects earn zero points if the description is not applicable, two points if it is highly applicable, and one if it is somewhat or sometimes true.
• We can see how difficult and dangerous it is to put into quantitative terms, a notion as wishy-washy and subject as evil.

THESE ARE ALL SQUISHY - BIG PICTURE THINGS

The result

Disconnect between our right and left brain. Subjectivity of life. Means a disconnect between the way we think and the way computers work.

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Our challenge

So the Chandler challenge is to overcome computer autism. To figure out how we can cheat the system so that computers can provide a simulacrum of gestalt.

• We still need to work within the confines of computer DNA. Pick a couple of easy to define, explicit things (easy to define by humans and easy to process by computers) which we can use to organize your information in such a way that you see the Big Picture.
• Anyone who builds models does this: Financial, Climate, Social trends. What are the key things to think about in order to get the big picture.

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SPECIFIC DIAGNOSIS

So what's wrong with PIMs today? How are they specifically not getting the big picture? They silo your data into tool-centric application areas and later on, we'll discuss how they compartmentalize your data into tool-centric folders.

Back in the day when

1. Processing power and
2. Storage space were issues

Yielded tool-centric applications that optimized for performance (just to be able to do the basic tasks) over usability. These tools were just good at what they were responsible for and didn't worry to much about playing well with other tools.

• Personal Information Managers generally consist of: Email client, Calendar, Taskpad, Notepad and Contacts manager.
• PIMs brought together several different applications into one uber-application in an attempt to create a more integrated solution to personal information management.
• However, no matter how you slice it, PIMs are still generally 4 separate apps living under a single roof...Not a single app

• Each application stores your data differently
• It's hard to share the same data between applications
• So your data is essentially trapped in the tool you used to create it

This means

• You can only see your data 1 app at a time. Can't see an integrated view of all your information relating to a Person or a Project.
• Organizational affordances are unique to each app: Email folders = Calendars = Taskpads = File system folders
• Status affordances are unique to each app: Flag = Hi / Lo priority = Event status = Color coding of file system folders
• Due dates for tasks don't show up on your calendar
• Tasks you schedule on your calendar don't show up on your taskpad
• Emails you flag for follow-up don't show up on your taskpad
• In other words Each app tool had it's own set of tool-ettes and while some of these tool-ettes were similar, they weren't the same and couldn't talk to each other.

The result: You constantly change views. You're constantly touching a different part of the elephant and you can't see that it's an elephant.

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The workaround solution: duplication of data. How many times have you copied information just to get it from one format to another?

• Receive an email inviting you to a meeting
• Copy the information in the email into an event item on your calendar
• Create a task for yourself to prepare for the meeting
• Write up your meeting agenda in a note or document
• Somewhere in there, you jotted down directions on how to get to the meeting
• Copy that information into a contact item in your contacts manager
• duplication.gif:
  

Further compartmentalization of data into folders

• Distinguishing between Organization and Management
• Primary organizing affordance in PIMs today is Folders.
• And this is the problem. There is, we think, an over*-emphasize organization over management. Because*organization = management. And we think it's more important to manage than to organize. Or rather with PIMs, it's impossible to truly organize. The best you can hope for is to manage.

• Legacy of file systems
• Which are in term legacy of file cabinets
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• But file systems are for documents
• Personal information is like stickies 90% of the time. The are born, live for a while and then die. You don't need to neatly file them. They come and go so fast, you have not time to organize them.
• And the ease with which computers automate sticky production means that we have more stickies than ever before.
• You would never file your stickies. It's overkill.
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• It would be like killing a squirrel with a bazooka.
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• And so much work.
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• Though periodically, stickies turn out to be documents (ie. meeting notes on an event). Those you file.

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Summing up the silo and compartmentalization problem

• Right now:
  • Information trapped by Application area or Kind
  • Information trapped in Folders
  • View the information sorted by Date
• As a result:
  • Your flagged items (Now or Later items in Chandler) are distributed willy-nilly throughout the PIM and there is no good way to see them together.
• Organize_hierarchy.gif:
  

• A feeble attempt at a solution in Outlook
• Outlook has the Today view, but again that's taking things a little too literally. What I want to see Now needs human attention.
  • Meeting from last week that I need to write meeting notes for
  • Task of putting together a presentation due next week that I need to work on
  • Email I sent out yesterday that I need to revise and send again
• None of these items would qualify for Outlook's Today view, but they are all things we might want to look at together in Chandlers Now section.
• Today is too literal. We need something squishier.

• There also a difference between integrating information and placing it side by side
• today_view.gif:
  

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Our theory

• Challenge is to figure out what the right attribute is.
• The Numbers Guy article about football stats. Yardage may be less important than %age of completions where you've fended off tacklers.
• Elections map. Land mass v. Population. Population yields a more accurate gestalt. Landmass doesn't vote. People do.
• We don't think it's something the computer can figure out. It has to be explicitly assigned by a human.
• Tool-centric or Kind-based distinctions are important, but should not be the primary way to view data. That actually, to get a grip on your life, you want to see your items organized by Status: Done, Now and Later.

How did we come to this conclusion?

David Allen: Centralization of information

Important questions you need to ask yourself into order to get a grip to maintain Mind Like Water:

• What can I do now? In order to figure out what you can do right now.
• What can I take on? To figure out what to do with newly arriving stuff.

In order to answer these questions, you need to see

• I need to and can do this Now
• And this is all the stuff I have to do Later

ALL IN ONE PLACE

This is the most basic way to manage your information.

David Allen: Iterative approach to information processing

• Design maxim #1: Let people make decisions when they're ready to. aka Don't force it.
• Current PIMs expect you to see the forest and the trees at the same time, on the first try. We're bad at that.
• When stuff comes in, the only way to manage it is to organize it, which requires you to create a forest structure in which to put your trees. Even before you have enough trees to know what kind of forest you're going to end up with. This is a priori system design and it's hard and bad.
• Basically you get stuff and your supposed to immediately understand what it is and what it's significance is in the grand scheme of both the Here and Now and Forever.
• Instead David Allen espouses a more organic, iterative information processing workflow. He understands that when you receive stuff you might not even know what it is and might not even want to or have time to try to understand right now. (So you drop it into Later).
• Paper-writing example. Structure and then Ideas? Or Ideas and then Structure.

STRUCTURE ONLY EMERGES AFTER SEVERAL PASSES OVER DETAILS and a system that can present those details in such a way as to help you SEE the structure.

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• Scenario
• You get an item: Can you read over my college application essay?
• Dilemma: Do you drop everything your doing right now to get this done? If not, how do you make sure you remember to do it?
• You can't deal. But you need to do it by next week.
• You shunt it into Later with a tickler date to drop it back into Now Next Tuesday so you have a day to read it and give feedback.

• Triage_Workflow.gif:
  

• Triage_Workflow_Linear_Time.gif:
  

SO REALLY THIS IS THE INVERSE OF EXISTING PIM WORKFLOW STRUCTURE. You start wide and then you funnel down to the specifics....only with the items you need to organize.

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• Triage_20040913.gif:
  

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Another way to break silos. Separation of Church and State

• Another way to de-emphasize the "tool" in software
• Design maxim #2: Separate people's data from the technology
• When your email client sends an email asking for volunteers for a fundraiser, it does all kinds of things to the email so now, you can't edit the email. You can't
  • Edit the body
  • Edit the addressing fields
  • Change the date sent or date received
  • Which makes sense at the technology layer. But think about the email simply as a piece of information...shouldn't you exercise absolute control over that piece of information? I communicate the content in the email to someone verbally, and I want to add them to the To: field to keep track of that fact. Shouldn't I be allowed to? The To: field to me is simply a way to stay on top of the people who have received this information regardless of the specific technology or a-technical way in which they received it. This is information management as opposed to tool management.
• Example Imagine if the only way you could interact with music was to read music? People aren't interested in interacting with the technology. We want to interact with our data.

YIELDS CONTROL OVER YOUR DATA

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• As processor speed and storage, efficiency is less of an issue. Burden of use is shifted off the user and onto the computer.

Stamping: Releasing information from technology

We mentioned earlier the problem of duplication that results from your information being trapped in a particular format (ie. email or task) and then needed to create a duplicate item simply to get the same information from one format to another (ie. email to calendar). Outlook has solved this problem for Email and Calendar, but it's not a general solution for all of the areas of the PIM.

INSERT STAMPING MODEL

• Sometimes things are just hybrids
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• David Allen: Why manage 2-3-4 items when you can manage 1
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• Design maxim: Let users make decisions when they're ready to make them Sometimes you just don't know what characteristics or attributes the information will take on over time.
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Wrap-up: Result of Triage and Stamping

Re-architected the way in you manage and are presented your information SO THAT

You can see your information across all PIM areas as the same piece of information. AND

You can iteratively make progress on your stuff in a more natural way. AND

Exercise more control over your information.

Turned the PIM workflows on their head and we've broken down the app-centric silos that segregated your data into almost useless compartments.

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1-D v. n-D

Even more freedom. Getting away from the 1-dimensional, fixed tree, hierarchy for organization.

So it's not enough to just free your data from each application area. They also need to be free from the organizational compartments you put them in.

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• Current model of organization 1-dimensional: A' is inside of A. A'' is inside of A'. A''' is inside of A''.
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• This 1-dimensionality causes a lot of duplication. Imagine if the card catalog at the library were not orthogonal!
• Region
  • Time period
    • Subject
      • Author
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• We want information to be
• Free-flowing
• Data does live in a single location.
• Data lives in an n-dimensional soup
• Cool pictures of n-dimensional space

• That's hard
• We've chosen 2 dimensions to start: Kind and Collection (or you can think of it as Topic)
• Rather than deciding to organize your data by Kind OR by Collection, you can do either which avoids:
  • Duplication
  • Trapped data

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INSERT SIDEBAR DEMO

• What are the benefits
• Don't need to worry about structure: Separate categorization for architecture. It's easy to label. It's hard to structure the labels.
• Some people never need to worry about architecture. They just have labels.

• This is because Design maxim #3: taxonomies are hard to build
  • The right structure is different depending on context
  • The right structure is unknowable a priori: Users are asked to create structure before they have data to structure. And then by the time they've filed their data away into this a priori structure, it's too labor intensive to change the structure because there is no coarse-grain way to manage or organize the data without building a folder structure.

Takeaway

• Software as a solution not a tool
• Separation of your information from the tools you use to do things with your data, so that you have complete control over your data.
• Natural workflow design: Allow users to make decisions when they are ready to.
  • Which means that all things are equal, until you decide to make something different
  • ie All things are notes until you decide you stamp them as something else
  • ie All collections can belong to all Application area, can receive items of all Kinds unless you choose to only look at one slice of the data
  • ie All categorization is in a flat a-structure, until you choose to make structure, at which point, you can change that structure in any way you like
• Shift as much of the burden of use from the user to the computer so that the computer complements the user