ScreenTrack: Using a Visual History of a Computer Screen to Retrieve Documents and Web Pages

Computers are used for various purposes, so frequent context switching is inevitable. In this setting, retrieving the documents, files, and web pages that have been used for a task can be a challenge. While modern applications provide a history of recent documents for users to resume work, this is not sufficient to retrieve all the digital resources relevant to a given primary document. The histories currently available do not take into account the complex dependencies among resources across applications. To address this problem, we tested the idea of using a visual history of a computer screen to retrieve digital resources within a few days of their use through the development of ScreenTrack. ScreenTrack is software that captures screenshots of a computer at regular intervals. It then generates a time-lapse video from the captured screenshots and lets users retrieve a recently opened document or web page from a screenshot after recognizing the resource by its appearance. A controlled user study found that participants were able to retrieve requested information more quickly with ScreenTrack than under the baseline condition with existing tools. A follow-up study showed that the participants used ScreenTrack to retrieve previously used resources and to recover the context for task resumption.Comment: CHI 2020, 10 pages, 7 figure

Restoring the Context of Interrupted Work with Desktop Thumbnails

International audienceKnowledge work is frequently interrupted. Interruptions enable collaboration and bring timely information, but they disrupt the fragile context of ongoing activities. Computers, now ubiquitous in knowledge work, have improved in their ability to track and restore digital context (documents and files), but they do a poor job of helping users restore mental context: the ideas, intentions, and motivations behind their work. Thumbnail images are an efficient way to help computer users re-find documents; we ask if they can also be used to restore mental context. We tested how three manipulations to thumbnails of personal computer screenshots impact their ability to help viewers recognize past activities and recall accurate and detailed context. In a 2-week study we found that thumbnails of portions of the screen need to be larger than thumbnails of the entire screen for successful activity recognition and that static screenshots prompted more accurate contextual recall than animations

Restoring the Context of Interrupted Work with Desktop Thumbnails

Knowledge work is frequently interrupted. Interruptions enable collaboration and bring timely information, but they disrupt the fragile context of ongoing activities. Computers, now ubiquitous in knowledge work, have improved in their ability to track and restore digital context (documents and files), but they do a poor job of helping users restore mental context: the ideas, intentions, and motivations behind their work. Thumbnail images are an efficient way to help computer users refind documents; we ask if they can also be used to restore mental context. We tested how three manipulations to thumbnails of personal computer screenshots impact their ability to help viewers recognize past activities and recall accurate and detailed context. In a 2-week study we found that thumbnails of portions of the screen need to be larger than thumbnails of the entire screen for successful activity recognition and that static screenshots prompted more accurate contextual recall than animations

Task, interrupted: understanding the effect of time costs on task interruptions during data entry

Computer-based work often involves looking up information from different sources. Though these interruptions are required to progress with work, switching away from a task can be disruptive: it slows people down, increases errors and it is challenging to remain focused on work. This thesis investigates how interruption management tools can better support people in managing these types of work-required interruptions in the context of data entry work. The first part of the thesis reports two qualitative studies looking at understanding data entry in an office setting. They demonstrate that physical interruptions are postponed until a convenient moment in the task if they are expected to take time, but digital interruptions are addressed immediately as these are presumed to be quick to deal with. The second part of the thesis reports three controlled experiments to test the hypothesis that people manage interruptions by avoiding time costs. Results show that if people are able to learn the expected time costs of digital interruptions, they avoid interruptions with a high time cost. They reduce the number of these interruptions and postpone them until later in the task, and address interruptions with low time costs first. The third part of the thesis reports an online experiment and a field study that evaluate a design intervention showing people the duration of their interruptions. These studies demonstrate that making people aware of the time costs of digital interruptions makes people reflect on what they were doing during an interruption, reduces the duration of interruptions, and makes people faster and more accurate in completing data entry tasks. Taken together, this thesis demonstrates that people manage interruptions based on expected time costs, and that giving people feedback on the time they spend on interruptions can help them manage their interruptions better. It makes a theoretical contribution by showing how people adapt to small changes in time costs by reducing the number and duration of interruptions, and postponing them until later in a task. It makes a practical contribution by showing that giving people feedback on time costs can help them to reduce the duration of interruptions, and improve their focus on the task at hand