What a to-do: studies of task management towards the design of a personal task list manager

This paper reports on the results of studies of task management to support the design of a task list manager. We examined the media used to record and organize to-dos and tracked how tasks are completed over time. Our work shows that, contrary to popular wisdom, people are not poor at prioritizing. Rather, they have well-honed strategies for tackling particular task management challenges. By illustrating what factors influence task completion and how representations function to support task management, we hope to provide a strong foundation for the design of a personal to-do list manager. We also present some preliminary efforts in this direction. Categories & Subject Descriptors: H.4.1 [Information Systems Applications]: Office Automation ? time management; H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems ?

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Victoria Bellotti, Brinda Dalal, Nathaniel Good, Peter Flynn, Daniel G. Bobrow, Nicolas Ducheneaut
• Keywords: CHI 2004, Factors Influence Task, Human Computer Interaction, Task List Manager, Task Management Challenges