Continuing advances in hardware technology have enabled the proliferation of faster, cheaper, and more capable personal computers. Users of all backgrounds rely on their computers to handle ever-expanding information, communication, and computation needs. As users spend more time interacting with their computers, it is becoming increasingly important to archive and later search the knowledge, ideas and information that they have viewed through their computers. However, existing state-of-the-art web and desktop search tools fail to provide a suitable solution, as they focus on static, accessible documents in isolation. Thus, finding the information one has viewed among the ever-increasing and chaotic sea of data available from a computer remains a challenge. This dissertation introduces DejaView, a personal virtual computer recorder that enhances personal computers with the ability to process display-centric content to help users with all the information they see through their computers. DejaView

Whether you are interested in improving the usability of Linux, Macintosh or Windows, there is one restriction you cannot escape – the hierarchical file storage system. The notion of files and folders has been with us for so long that it almost seems axiomatic. In this paper we look at the effects on users of forcing a hierarchical classification of files. We also consider how some of the resultant problems can be tackled with a new piece of file browsing software based on the ideas of relational database systems.

Applications that automatically capture some details of a live experience and provide future access to that experience are increasingly common in the ubiquitous computing community. However, there remains a largely unexplored design space of potential new applications, and very few of the previous systems have been able to evolve in functionality over an extended period of time. To overcome these challenges, we present a distillation of the essential architectural features of an automated capture and access application. We introduce a toolkit, Infrastructure for Capture and Access (INCA) that encourages a simplified model for designing, implementing and evolving capture and access applications. We validate the utility of INCA through three sample applications that show variety within the wider design space and accessibility of the toolkit for others.

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In this article, we consider various definitions for CSCW and related terms, and we draw outlines around the large scope covered by CSCW. Subsequently, we consider the main challenges that have impeded us from realizing the great promise of CSCW and we identify some factors that could help CSCW succeed. We review the current state of practice for CSCW, along with some promising technologies. We close with our outlook for CSCW.

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People are storing an increasing amount of their data digitally in the form of files. However, many of the current navigation based interfaces are unable to support efficient retrieval of this information. We develop a file system crawler, and use this to conduct a user study to characterise the structural features and temporal usage patterns of file systems. Based on these findings and the extensive prior literature, we develop a spatially consistent representation of entire file systems which is augmented with colourcoded tags allowing efficient access to temporally relevant target folders within the file system (SCOFT). We conduct a user study to evaluate the effectiveness of this technique and the supporting techniques developed. Our findings show that SCOFT allows users to revisit files 3 times faster than when using a standard file browser. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank his supervisor, Andy Cockburn, for his guidance, inspiration, and support throughout this project. He would also like to thank his parents for their love and support. Thanks must go to all the experiment participants for volunteering their time and valuable feedback. Thanks to my fellow Honours students for many interesting discussions and an great year, Stephen Fitchett for doing some inspiring work and help with AccessRank, and the rest of the department for interesting questions