The Associative PDA

Introduction

Common systems for personal information management fail because of poor support for mobile use, separation of information, and increasingly
complex hierarchical structures, which are hard to search. With the Associative PDA we propose an associative system that overcomes the shortcomings of previous systems.

Prototypes

The first version of the Associative PDA was realized and evaluated as a Flash prototype, exploring the general acceptability and use of associations:

• Storyboards
• Paper Prototype
• Flash Prototype
• Flash Demo
• The Associative PDA - Diploma Thesis by Jonathan Diehl

For the second version, we concentrated on note-taking as an example of a PIM activity and developed an elaborate, mobile prototype that was evaluated in a long-term study.

• The Associative PDA 2.0 - Diploma Thesis by Eileen Falke

Results

We have shown that the use of associations for personal information management is well-understood and perceived as useful by the users. Further, the use of associations for note-taking has led to very efficient search behavior.

Future Work

We want to show the general usefulness of associations for personal information management by evaluating an elaborate and complete prototype with real information.

Appearances

The Associative PDA was presented as a Work-in-Progress poster at the conference on ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) 2006.

• UbiComp06 Poster Proposal
• UbiComp06 Poster

The Associative PDA 2.0 was presented as a Work-in-Progress poster at the conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) 2008.

• CHI08 Poster Proposal
• CHI08 Poster

Related Projects

• Organic User Interfaces