@inproceedings{a48e876a933a40428649d2f58675c6c8,
title = "Exploring new metaphors for a networked world through the file biography",
abstract = "We present a body of work undertaken in response to the challenge outlined by Harper et al. in their paper, 'What is a File?' [9]. Through a conceptual and design-led exploration of new file metaphors, we developed the 'file biography', a digital entity that encompasses the provenance of a file and allows the user to keep track of how it propagates. We explored this through prototyping and utilised it in two user studies. In the studies, we (i) asked people to sketch out file biographies for their own content, and (ii) deployed a tool enabling users to build their own simple file biographies across multiple versions of Word documents. We conclude that new file metaphors may need to play different roles for different types of digital content, with a distinction being drawn between content that is 'in production' and virtual possessions that are, in a sense, a 'finished' artefact.",
keywords = "Control, Fork, Grammar of action, Ownership, Patina, Propagation, Provenance, Version control, Virtual possession",
author = "Lindley, \{Si{\^a}n E.\} and Gavin Smyth and Robert Corish and Anastasia Loukianov and Michael Golembewski and Luger, \{Ewa A.\} and Abigail Sellen",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).; 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018 ; Conference date: 21-04-2018 Through 26-04-2018",
year = "2018",
month = apr,
day = "19",
doi = "10.1145/3173574.3173692",
language = "English",
series = "Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
pages = "1--12",
booktitle = "CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
address = "United States",
}