A historical personal information management project

FoundIt: Finding Files, Remembering Context

FoundIt was a personal information management project discussed in Anjali Arora’s Artbrush portfolio and blog. Its archived pages describe finding and organising files and email, and extending Google Desktop. The historical landing page names Windows 2000/XP and Internet Explorer6.

The useful design question is familiar: a person may remember why a document mattered without remembering its filename. Searching by a few typed words addresses only part of that problem. Organisation, retrieval and the context of a previous encounter are related but distinct activities.

A product tour can reveal the decisions an interface makes about those activities. What must a person know before starting? Which relationships become visible? How much work is shifted from searching later to organising now?

This page records the historical project rather than offering a supported contemporary application. There is no executable download here, and the presence of an old product description should not be read as a promise of compatibility with current systems.

Continue to the project-tour record for a closer look at the relationship between remembered context and finding information. The archived pages remain the source for claims about the original product’s features.