Jeuris, Steven

Throughout history, the design of interactive computing systems hasalways been inhibited by technological limitations of the time. Fora truly groundbreaking paradigm shift to occur (reshaping the verynature of human-computer interaction), a tremendous amount of researchand engineering is required. Therefore, most computing systemsinstead build on top of an existing stack of contemporaneoustechnologies, inescapably adhering to their underlying interactionparadigms. When left unquestioned, such an incremental approachinadvertently shoehorns system design into preexisting notions ofhow computing systems work. Thus, it is likely that design decisionsimposed by technological constraints of the past have needlesslybeen carried over to modern-day systems. With information technologynow forming a major part of our daily lives and giving rise tonew emerging design challenges, it is prudent to address these not inisolation, but by fundamentally reevaluating the current computingparadigm.To this end, activity-centric computing has been brought forwardas an alternative computing paradigm, addressing the increasingstrain put on modern-day computing systems. Activity-centric computingfollows a top-down approach to design using the full contextof human activity as the starting point of analysis. The focus nolonger lies on individual technologies, but on how computing systemsare used as mediators within the broader context of humanintentionality, thus also taking into account the encompassing community,environment, and dependencies on other technologies. Userscan aggregate resources, work, and collaborate on them within goalorientedworkspaces that are meaningful to the user, as opposed tohaving to adhere to data structures imposed by specific technologies.Such systems have been deployed successfully in a variety of differentdomains, including healthcare, experimental biology, and softwareengineering.However, several recurring open issues have been identified basedon the deployment and evaluation of different activity-centric computingsystems. Broadly speaking these impact the scalability andintelligibility of current research prototypes. In this dissertation, Ipostulate that such issues arise due to a lack of support for the fullset of practices which make up activity management. Most notably, althoughtask and interruption management are an integral part of personalinformation management, they have thus far been neglectedin prior activity-centric computing systems. Advancing the researchagenda of activity-centric computing, I (1) implement and evaluate an activity-centric desktop computing system, incorporating support forinterruptions and long-term task management; (2) provide empiricaldata on the overhead of switching between activities when using contemporarydesktop computing systems; and (3) implement a softwarearchitecture facilitating developers to aggregate resources handled byindependent applications into one central activity manager.<br/

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Task and Interruption Management in Activity-Centric Computing

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Task and Interruption Management in Activity-Centric Computing

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