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making goals when no one is keeping score
Well, after writing a few statements of purpose of dubious quality (and utility). I have (mostly through the help of Christina and Max) been able to boil them down to something vaguely meaningful-- I think.
My goal is to create new interaction methods that help people better understand their lives through their own personal information. My research integrates knowledge from computer science, cognitive psychology and design to investigate ways better utilize our past experiences to encourage self-reflection and to improve an individual's ability to make informed life decisions.
I am motivated by the problem of the "interrupt-driven lifestyle'' caused by the constant demands placed on us by today's instant ubiquitous digital communications. The effects of this lifestyle--stress, disorganization, and feelings of inundation--are correlated with a lack of self-understanding suggesting a need for more informed self-reflection. Modern-day personal information technology, however, has been designed to optimize productivity rather than self-understanding and often aggravates this situation rather than improves it. In my research, I seek to change the focus of personal information management as follows: rather than helping people accomplish tasks faster, I work to help them understand how to make better decisions about which tasks are important to them and how to accomplish these more effectively.
My research project will allow people to easily access and understand their personal histories in minute detail through summaries and statistical visualizations from their activity data. Much in the same way that Google search and Wikipedia have allowed us to quickly access seemingly infinite knowledge about the world around us, my project will enable us to reference our individual past in a variety of ways. The backbone of this system is a real-world model created by bringing together information about a users friends and activities from the web, life-tracking services and personal devices. Among the many potential uses, this enables context-aware personal information retrieval-- such as gathering your notes and emails for a client meeting or quickly glancing over the past year to see how well you stuck to a new years resolution. My hope is to create systems that are so intuitive to use, adaptive and embedded in day-to-day activities that users will access them instinctively.
Does this make sense to anyone else? How might it be improved or clarified?
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about me
I am investigating interfaces, interaction techniques, and visualization methods that help people understand their lives through exploring their own personal information
Check out my current projects - atomate, eyebrowse and poyozo
email: brennanmoore@gmail.com
twitter: @zamiang
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