Let’s get personal: the little nudge that improves document retrieval in the Cloud
| Pages | 379-396 |
| Published date | 06 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-06-2018-0098 |
| Date | 06 March 2019 |
| Author | Ofer Bergman,Steve Whittaker,Yaron Frishman |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Let’s get personal: the little nudge
that improves document retrieval
in the Cloud
Ofer Bergman
Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Steve Whittaker
University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, USA, and
Yaron Frishman
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Abstract
Purpose –State-of-the-art cloud applications are problematic for collaborative document management; their
current design does not encourage active personal folder categorization. Cloud applications such as Google
Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive store documents automatically, so at no point are users directed to categorize
them by placing them in folders. To encourage active categorization and promote effective retrieval of cloud
documents, the authors designed an add-on “nudge”called Personal Organizer which prompts Google Drive
users to categorize by storing cloud documents in personal folders. The add-on prompt is triggered when
users attempt to close uncategorized or unnamed documents. The purpose of this paper is to test whether
using the Personal Organizer add-on leads participants to actively store their documents in folders that they
personally created, and whether this promotes more successful and efficient retrieval.
Design/methodology/approach –To test the add-on, the authors conducted a pretest-manipulation-post-
test intervention study with 34 participants lasting over three months. In both tests, participants were asked
to retrieve personal documents taken from their own “Recents”list to improve ecological validity.
Findings –Using our add-on doubled the percentage of documents that were actively stored in
folders. Additionally, using personally created folders substantially improved retrieval success while
decreasing retrieval time.
Originality/value –Implementing our findings can improve document storage and retrieval for millions of
users of collaborative cloud storage. The authors discuss broader theoretical implications concerning the role
of active organization for retrieval in collaborative repositories, as well as design implications.
Keywords Documents, Personal information management, Cloud-based repositories, Folders,
Group information management, Nudging
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Cloud-based document storage is growing fast and is projected to overtake local storage by
2020 (Anderson and Rainie, 2012). Applications such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon
Drive, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive show rapid adoption with Google Drive
alone having over 800m active users[1]. Cloud-based document storage has two main
advantages: first, it allows ubiquitous retrieval of documents anytime, anywhere and
with any device with internet access. Second, it allows straightforward document-sharing
with different collaborators having access to the same document. Furthermore, cloud-based
services like Drive also allow several collaborators to simultaneously work on the same
document without having to manage multiple versions.
Despite these benefits, one critical disadvantage of these collaborative repositories is that
participants find it difficult to access information that has been organized by others
(Bergman et al., 2014; Massey et al., 2014; Rader, 2009; Berlin et al., 1993). Google Drive Journal of Documentation
Vol. 75 No. 2, 2019
pp. 379-396
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-06-2018-0098
Received 21 June 2018
Revised 6 October 2018
Accepted 7 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The authors thank our participants. This study was supported by the Google Faculty Research Award
2014_R2_79.1.
379
Document
retrieval
in the Cloud
(henceforth Drive) applications (e.g. Google Docs and Google Sheets) and Microsoft
OneDrive Office related applications (Office Online and Office 365) also have a specific
and critical problem; their current design does not promote active folder categorization.
This is important because users have well-documented preferences for retrieving their
information from such personally created folders (Bergman and Whittaker, 2016), and more
importantly actively organizing information into such personal folders improves retrieval
(Bergman et al., 2010;Bergman et al., 2014). The design of these state of the art cloudstorage
applications canbe contrasted with the saving interface thatMac and Windows applications
use for personal document organization (e.g. in M.S. Office 2016) which actively encourages
users to store their documents in folders on their local drive. In the Mac/Windows
environment,if users attempt to close a document without categorizing it, the system actively
prompts them to do so. In contrast, documents created with Google Drive applications
(henceforth, Drivedocuments) and OneDrive applications are stored automatically once they
are created, and at no particular point is the user directed to categorize them.Neither creators
of new documents nor collaborators receiving a Google Drive document link are encouraged
by Drive’s design to categorize documents by placing them in folders.
To tackle this critical retrieval problem with collaborative repositories, we designed an
add-on called Personal Organizer. Personal Organizer actively prompts users both to store
the document in a folder and name the document. It is triggered when users attempt to close
a document without categorizing or naming it. Although this feature is by no means new
and is the standard in the Mac/Windows interface, it is consistent with nudging interfaces
which encourage user behaviors that are burdensome in the short term (e.g. physical
exercise, setting aside money for pensions) but which accrue future benefits (improve health,
pension) (Némery et al., 2011; Némery and Brangier, 2014; Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).
Likewise, our add-on is designed to prompt folder categorization which may be onerous
right now but which will improve future retrieval. Consistent with nudging approaches
participants can choose to override the behaviors that are encouraged by the interface, and
choose not to actively name documents or organize them into personal folders.
The add-on allowed us to compare the Drive applications interface (which has no system
encouragement to categorize documents) with the Personal Organizer interface while
keeping all other elements the same. We defined participant folders as folders that are
personally created by participants where content is exclusively organized by the folder
owner. Collaborator folders are defined as those in which content is co-organized by multiple
participants. We had two hypotheses:
H1. At storage, Personal Organizer will lead participants to actively store their Drive
documents in folders that they personally created (henceforth called participant folders).
H2. At retrieval, using Personal Organizer to create participant folders will promote both
more successful and efficient retrieval.
To test these hypotheses, we conducted a three-phase pretest-manipulation-post-test study
with 34 participants to evaluate the effects of using Personal Organizer. We also address
other basic research questions about collaborative repositories, including when retrieval
from shared archives is most successful and efficient.
In the pretest we established a pre-intervention baseline for retrieval by asking
participants to retrieve their Drive documents, allowing us to measure their retrieval success
and efficiency.Then we installed our PersonalOrganizer add-on onto participants’computers.
Consistent with nudging approaches which encourage rather than compel behaviors we did
not directlyinstruct participants to followthe add-on’s suggestions. Insteadparticipants could
use their own discretion whether to actively name and organize documents or press “cancel”
to close the add-on interface. After three months with the add-on, we conducted a post-test
with the same retrieval evaluation procedure as the pretest. To evaluate the effects of the
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