Title: Planz to Put Our Digital Information in Its Place
Authors: William Jones, Dawei Hou, Bhuricha Deen Sethanandh, Sheng Bi, and Jim Gemmell
Venue: CHI 2010
Summary
Planz is a personal project planner that works as an application overlay for the existing file system, or email and web pages. The author's state that they envision folders as working somewhat like doors, but would prefer them to work more like windows, and this is what their application attempts to implement. Planz focuses on a primary document that functions as an outline. Two primary features of Planz are "Drag & Link" and "In-context Create".
Summary
Planz is a personal project planner that works as an application overlay for the existing file system, or email and web pages. The author's state that they envision folders as working somewhat like doors, but would prefer them to work more like windows, and this is what their application attempts to implement. Planz focuses on a primary document that functions as an outline. Two primary features of Planz are "Drag & Link" and "In-context Create".
Discussion
This seems like a neat idea, but I think the author's are attempting to do too much. Its really hard to make an interface with lots of features that people still want to use, because the more features you add the more trouble people will have learning to use the software. This is a problem I think Planz will suffer from. Additionally, removing the windows style of file management altogether will raise heavy handicaps in the time it takes users to learn the new system, a price that probably doesn't justify the implementation of the interface.
I agree that adding too many features may be the downfall of this project.
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