Comments:
Comment #1: Zachary Henkel
Comment #2: Steven Hennessy
Paper Information
Title: Planz to Put Our Digital Information in Its Place
Authors: William Jones, Dawei Hou, Bhuricha Deen Sethanandha, Sheng Bi, Jim Gemmell
Conference: CHI 2010, Atlanta, GA, USA
Summary
Planz (short for 'Personal Project Planner') is an integrative document-like overlay to a folder hierarchy system. It allows additional support including e-mail messages, web references, and informal notes. On the front end of the document it shows the files listed in outline, tree like structure along with two basic operations "Drag & Link" and "In Context Create." It acts as a word processor but allows better manipulation and options to store the data. In an early evaluation of Planz they found out that it was a feature believed to 'save a lot time.' They also did a study with 8 people and had them perform various task and then answer a questioner discussing their experience. While the results showed a mix of responses from what the usual prototype some people had been using for years they found that it had a good visability factor. As far as future work they plan to make modifications for certain features in order bring forward their vision for this product.
Planz program (Source: Publication)
Discussion
I thought this paper was interesting to read. I think the Planz program sounds very useful and can't even begin to count how many times I've had to take time to find documents I've stored on my computer or external storage devices. I think it would have helped this paper if they would have discussed more about the features of the program and use a few more visual clues to how the system works; however, I did notice how they did discover they had a website to discuss in more detail their program and how it works.
They did discuss some features of the application, but like you said, more visual clues are needed. I also found their website... the application is available for download. It might be an interesting idea to download it and see how it works!
ReplyDeleteI agree, more visual clues would have been good to get a better feel for how the system operates. I'm probably resistant to try it out because I'm too used to having all my files all over the place, haha. I would like to see what results they get with longer tests though.
ReplyDeleteIncluding drag-and-drop interaction makes it easier to use. The option to view things in a tree-like view presents an organized way to see tasks and their dependencies. This would be a great way to organize a project since you can see the dependencies.
ReplyDelete