Fox, A. R., Guo, P., Klokmose, C. N., Dalsgaard, P., Satyanarayan, A., Xia, H., & Hollan, J. D. (2020). Towards a dynamic multiscale personal information space: Beyond application and document centered views of information. Conference Companion of the 4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, 136–143

A manifesto of sorts. Rare in academic Human-computer interaction! The authors argue that “we lack a cognitively convivial space for intellectual work” and insist that “information should be lively, helpful, responsive, and enjoyable to interact with.” This is only possible “if information transcends applications and has the flexibility to dynamically alter its representation to support the changing state of a task as it evolves.”

The authors envision information which:

  • carries behavior (i.e. Dynamic medium)
  • can be spatialized]
  • can be presented in multiple representations and multiple levels of abstraction (a la Webstrates)
  • carries context of its activity
  • comports with Malleable software notions, e.g. “instrumental interaction”

They suggest that they’re going to develop environments “operating according to empirically-grounded principles of behavior”, but I don’t think the cogsci is strong enough to be a high-order guiding bit here.

A few favorites among the authors: Philip Guo, Peter Dalsgaard, Clemens Klokmose.

Last updated 2022-10-02.