Managing Activities in Time and Space in an Activity-Based Computing System

Abstract

While most designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks, research has shown that "people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work". Current systems are notoriously bad at supporting this. Switching between these units of work (activities) requires the user to find the relevant applications and documents associated with them each time. After closing the activity it can't be restored, and working on multiple activities in parallel causes information overload.

An Activity-Based Computing (ABC) system supplements the prevalent data- and application-oriented computing paradigm with technologies for handling multiple, parallel and mobile (cross-device) work activities. Several implementations have demonstrated the advantages of such a system, but some open issues remain. Organizing a large number of activities is troublesome. The problem of managing a lot of applications shifted to managing activities.

Since an agenda is a known useful tool to plan activities, applying this metaphor to an ABC system seems logical. Activities can be organized in time to indicate when work was done on them, or is planned. Space can be used to indicate how activities relate to each other.

This project demonstrates a system to manage activities in time and space as part of an ABC system on Windows 7, addressing some of the known issues when working on multiple activities. The design is evaluated by performing a user study.