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Organizing Documents to Support Activities

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Human-Computer Interaction and Knowledge Discovery in Complex, Unstructured, Big Data (HCI-KDD 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7947))

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Abstract

This paper describes a study in the wild of software for document organization aimed at supporting activities. A preliminary study of current practices with traditional tools was followed by the design and development of a program called Docksy. Docksy introduces workspaces explicitly zoned by movable panels and features document descriptors augmented with tags, comments, and checkboxes. Docksy was deployed for at least two weeks and users’ practices with the new tool were studied. The aim of the study was to see how the new tool was appropriated and how people used the new features. The workspace structured in panels was shown to support users in clustering and separating documents, in having a holistic view of the document space, in locating files inside a workspace, and in managing temporary files. The study also shows how tags, comments, and checkboxes afforded the use of documents as explicit items in a workflow. The study suggests Docksy supports users in a variety of information and activity management tasks, including new practices for emerging activities.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Anna Zacchi & Frank M. Shipman III

Authors
  1. Anna Zacchi
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  2. Frank M. Shipman III
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation (IMI), Medical University Graz, Auenbruggerplatz 2/V, 8036, Graz, Austria

    Andreas Holzinger

  2. Department of Informatics, Systems and Communication, University of Milano-Bicocca, Viale Sarca 336, 20126, Milano, Italy

    Gabriella Pasi

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Zacchi, A., Shipman, F.M. (2013). Organizing Documents to Support Activities. In: Holzinger, A., Pasi, G. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction and Knowledge Discovery in Complex, Unstructured, Big Data. HCI-KDD 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7947. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39146-0_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39146-0_38

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39145-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39146-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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