Summarization and Personal Information Management Carolyn Penstein Ros

Summarization and Personal Information Management Carolyn Penstein Rosé Language Technologies Institute/ Human-Computer Interaction Institute

Announcements Questions? n Homework 1 assigned today n ¨ Due n Jan 23 at 8 pm Plan for Today ¨ Overview of Information Overload Literature

Interaction between the problem and human behavior Problem s u c Human Behavior Solution Design o f s To y’ a d Technology Problem?

Information Overload in 3 Contexts Grand Challenges 3 contexts related to our Grand Challenges n What important characteristics do these three contexts share? n What important differences do you see? n Can there be one universal solution? n

Cancer: Student Quote n The information overload problems described in the cancer information seeking paper seem to me to highlight an important point in the field of information overload. Previously, the information would have only have been easily available through their doctor which would prevent overload, but also restrict access to information. With the wealth of healthcare related information available online, people now have access to more raw data. However, the information that they need is not a simple function of having access to data. Without the medical expertise and knowledge required previously provided by the doctors, there is too much to make sense of. This isn't just a case of there being too much for the time-constraints of the information-seeker. It is a case of insufficient expertise of the information-seeker to answer their own queries given the data.

Information Literacy Can we do something about this? Recognize an information need n Identify likely information sources and retrieve information n Assess quality and applicability of information You could think of n Understand use information to makeas information overload decisions the experience of not being able to do this effectively n

What is information overload related to? External Factors n Behavioral Factors n Too much information coming in Ineffective Information Management Don’t know what to attend to ¨ Don’t know what to ignore ¨ Affective Factors n Personal Factors n Cognitive Factors n Stress or anxiety, feeling overwhelmed Socioeconomic status, health status Ambiguity Don’t know the answer ¨ Don’t know what to choose ¨

How much of this can we influence?

What do you think this means?

What can we do about this?

Student Comments n So it seems that the task of information summarization is not only to distill and compress the information, but also to provide more natural ways for helping people to manage the information effectively, guiding them to find better ways of coping information overload, and hopefully change their attitude towards the vast amount of information.

Conclusion Our findings also have implications for the potentially larger role information professionals can play in the health arena. In particular, information professionals, in partnership with other community health resources and local health care providers, are particularly poised to provide training in information literacy skills to low literacy groups through public programs. Moreover, with some sensitivity training on various health issues, health information professionals will be able to deliver personalized information services to individuals who may have most need of assistance.

Election Overload: what’s the issue? n Overwhelmed with uncertainty about who to vote for ¨ Maybe there just aren’t any good options n n n Deluge of “information” from the competition between candidates No systematic study of information overload in this context Facebook story illustrates the magnitude of the deluge of information (more than typical email issues)

How is this context different ? External Factors n Behavioral Factors n Too much information coming in Ineffective Information Management Don’t know what to attend to ¨ Don’t know what to ignore ¨ Affective Factors n Personal Factors n Cognitive Factors n Stress or anxiety, feeling overwhelmed Socioeconomic status, political affiliation? Ambiguity Don’t know the answer ¨ Don’t know what to choose ¨

Student Quotes n n n They don't really offer any constructive ideas about how to make it easier to browse all these comments, and it isn't clear to me that anybody would actually want to do so. So it begs the question, who is being overloaded with information? I think it is the question of what is it that people need to know and how accurately that information can be filtered out. I believe that so many candidates pumping out so much information about themselves and each other, it is nearly impossible to fact-check or validate any of it.

n Both articles argue that is not lack of information what is confusing the voters, it is excess. I agree with jweisz that in the case of Facebook, may be people are not interested as much in receiving information, but in expressing their thoughts. The same way people go to Rallys not to have access to unbiased information, but to express their support.

Potential Political Implications of Summarization Technology? n This article reminds me of recent Korean presidential election. It's true that too much information is making people unable to decide, but I think politicians are also behind this. Since internet is fast, politicians believe they can change the people's opinions overnight. Therefore, it seems that they keep big scandals until the last moment. As the election date got closer, politicians presented stronger and stronger scandals to the press. Well, this was what happened in the presidential election in Korea, December, last year. There were scandals after scandals and issues after issues until the very night before the election.

Janssen and de Poot Interesting! Started the investigation because an earlier attempt to increase information sharing seemed to increase information overload Why do you think they chose to n Main finding: severity of information overload investigate senior managers? associated with strategies used to cope n ¨ Do the strategies cause the severity? ¨ Or do people respond differently because the severity is different? ¨ Are they stuck? Is there hope?

Methodology from Janssen & de Poot n n Started with focal research questions Structured interviews with target population ¨ Experience overload ¨ Coping strategies ¨ Suggestions for what would help Self-report? Is this a problem here? What about “small and skewed sample size”? with information n Affinity diagramming bottom -up clustering technique, allows categories to emerge

What do you notice about the critical incidents?

Textual Analysis Technique n Emergent People Clusters Green [7] : non -sufferers ¨ Red [4]: permanentsufferers ¨ Orange [4]: occasional sufferers ¨ n Some disagreement, resolved by consensus * Also different number of incidents person.

Can we do something with technology?

Coping Strategies What is the real problem? Is there a design idea in here?

What do you think?

Student Quotes n Well, it seems to me that the article is telling us what really matters with information overload is not a tool or method but the person's life style. This actually discourages me from studying tools or ways of Personal Information Management because those who are good at managing their information would do well without any help of tool and those who don't won't do well even with a great tool.

Student Quotes n n Finally, I found the conclusion of the study, i. e. attributing information overload primarily to “too much work resting on the shoulders of one person” to be somewhat trivial and out of context as that is something which is dependent on a company’s organization. Reducing information in any case would reduce the information overload. Similar comment posted in connection with Facebook article – is this a viable solution?

Homework 1 (Due Jan 23, 8 pm) n 1 page write-up, posted to Drupal ¨ Feel free to post comments in response to write-ups submitted by your class mates n n n Select one of the Grand Challenges Describe the scenario you are targeting What is the main problem in connection with information overload here? What is your proposed solution and why do you think it will work? Mock up an example summary to illustrate your idea

Example: How could you do this better?

Another type of summary

Yet another type of summary

Questions?