I think the notion of a smart personal assistant is a powerful
one...and I'd like to add one more layer of nuance to it, which I
think might make the difference between users finding the assistant
mysterious and annoying (ie. Microsoft's Clippie) versus useful and
an active partner in managing their information.
Two of the many differences between an assistant like Clippie and a
real life assistant:
1. You can't ask Clippie: Why did you do, what you did?
2. You can't give Clippie direct feedback: Why don't you try this
next time instead?
I think before you can have 2, you need 1...Meaning, every auto-magic
thing your "personal Chandler asst" does for you needs to be
presented in context. You need to understand why and how Chandler
decided to pull up those articles on Vietnam...If you did:
1. You could navigate to look at things "in the environs" of the
Vietnam articles your assistant pulled up to see if there were things
it missed (ie. Day trip over the Cambodian border)
2. Allowing the user to do #1, provides them with a way to close the
feedback loop and possibly turn it into a virtuous, self-perpetuating
cycle. Not only can the Chandler assistant provide helpful
suggestions...the user can provide some helpful suggestions back to
the assistant as well.
Mimi
On Sep 28, 2005, at 11:17 PM, Philippe Bossut wrote:
Mimi Yin wrote:
One thought is that we often files things as "Read someday maybe"
primarily because they came to us at the wrong time. As in, one
day, I know I will want to visit Vietnam, so I want to archive
this article on Pho cafes in Saigon for that "One-day in the
future" trip.
The problem is that when we finally get around to planning that
trip, will we even remember the resources we filed away in some
huge "Travel" folder years ago? And even if we remembered that we
had it, would Google find it faster than hunting for it in our PIM?
So the key is, "Someday maybe" items need to reappear on their own
later on the "time is ripe" to receive such information. (ie. If
you later on finally get around to planning your Vietname trip,
rather than having to go dig in your Travel folder to find those
articles which you may or may not remember anything about...can
the system present you with a: Hey, remember this stuff about
Vietnam you tagged 2 years ago? tickler)
In that case, it's a smart tickler, not something you set ("remind
me about Vietnam in x months") as described in GTD but something in
Chandler that is able to 1) analyse the context of what you're
doing and 2) provide automatically references to your personal
archive that could be relevant to this context.
It's a very interesting idea. I personally think that software
should be more proactive at doing things for you (in this case,
fetching relevant infos you forgot you had) rather than simply
reacting to user's orders. We'll be moving toward an active
assistant away from a passive one.
Cheers,
- Philippe
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