PimVis: Exploring and Re-finding Documents in Cross-Media Information Spaces

Abstract

Over the last decade, we have witnessed an emergence of Personal Information Management (PIM) solutions. Despite the fact that paper documents still form a significant part of our daily working activities, existing PIM systems usually support the organisation and re-finding of digital documents only. While physical document tracking solutions such as RFID- or computer vision-based systems are recently gaining some attention, they usually focus on the paper document tracking and offer limited support for re-finding activities. We present PimVis, a solution for exploring and re-finding digital and paper documents in so-called cross-media information spaces. The PimVis user interface enables a unified organisation of digital and paper documents through the creation of bidirectional links between the digital and physical information space. The presented personal cross-media information management solution further supports the extension with alternative document tracking techniques as well as augmented reality solutions. A formative PimVis evaluation revealed the high potential of fully integrated cross-media PIM solutions.