l l CH196 APRIL 13-18, 1996
Lifestreams: An Alternative to the Desktop Metaphor
Scott Fertig, Eric Freeman and David Gelernter
Department of Computer Science
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut 06520
ABSTRACT
We contend that managing one’s own electronic world
can be a frustrating task for most computer users, re-
quiring too many separate applications, too many file
transfers and format translations, the invention of too
many pointless names and the construction of organi-
zational hierarchies that too quickly become obsolete.
What is needed is a metaphor and system for organiz-
ing the electronic “bits of paper” we all so easily collect,
whether we create them ourselves or they come to us
in the form of email, downloaded images, web pages, or
scheduling reminders. Lifestreams is such a system.
BASIC MODEL
Lifestreams uses a simple organizational metaphor, a
time-ordered stream of documents, to replace conven-
tional files and directories [3, 4]. Stream filters and soft-
ware agents are used to organize, locate, summarize and
monitor incoming information. Lifestreams subsumes
many separate desktop applications to accomplish the
most common communication, scheduling, and search
and retrieval tasks; yet its machine-independent, client-
server architecture is open so that users can continue to
use the document types, and viewers & editors they are
accustomed to.
A lifestrearn is a time-ordered stream of documents that
functions as a diary of your electronic life; every doc-
ument you create is stored in your lifestream, as are
the documents other people send you. The tail of your
stream cent ains documents from the past, perhaps start-
ing with your electronic birth certificate. Moving away
from the tail and toward the present, your stream con-
tains more recent documents such as papers in progress
or the latest electronic mail you’ve received—other doc-
uments, such as pictures, correspondence, bills, movies,
voice mail and software are stored in between. Moving
beyond the present and into the future, the stream con-
tains documents you will need: reminders, your calendar
items, and to-do lists.
WHY LIFESTREAMS?
Studies [6, 1, 7, 2, 8] have shown that users of common
desktop systems have difficulty:
@ Copyright on this materia! is held by the authors.
. Organizing and finding information within hierarchi-
cal file systems.
l Making use of archived information, which users nor-
mally discard so that they are not overwhelmed by it.
l Getting a “big picture” view.
l Managing schedules and reminders.
Lifestreams provides a metaphor for organizing the elec-
tronic documents we all so easily collect—whether they
come to us in the form of electronic mail, downloaded
images, pages gathered from the Web, or scheduling
reminders—in a fluid and natural way that reflects the
way users work.
THE LIFESTREAMS INTERFACE
‘The Lifestreams interface is presented in Figure 1, show-
ing a stream of documents. The user can slide the mouse
pointer over the document representations to “glance”
at each document, or use the scroll bar in the lower
left-hand corner to roll themselves back into the past.
Figure 1: The Lifestreams Interface.
Color and animation indicate important document fea-
tures. The borders of unread documents are colored
red, the borders of writable documents made thicker and
open documents are offset to the side to indicate they
are being edited. Incoming documents slide in from the
left side to alert the user, and newly created documents
pop down from the top and push the stream backwards
by one document into the past. In this way documents
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