Inciting Event

My desire for better information organization comes from experience. Specifically, events that span document types in disparate storage systems. For example, a car accident or medical issue with tax implications.

For a car accident, I might have:

• Pictures of the damage.
• A copy of my auto insurance policy.
• Contact information for: the other driver, the repair shop, etc.
• A police report.
• Notes about time, date, and state of the repairs or claim.
• Links to online resources such as insurance forms.

That information might be stored in:

• My smartphone's photos and/or backed up online.
• PDFs.
• Entries in my phone's addressbook.
• Email.
• Text files or an online note taking app (like Evernote or Microsoft OneNote).
• Browser bookmarks.

Using that many information repositories is a terrible user experience.

Not only do I have the stress of the event and repairs, but now I have to remember where I stored some critical piece of information or find it on demand (no easy task).

I think we can do better. And that belief is what triggered my interest in personal information organization and systems to support that organization and usability.