TaskTracer: a desktop environment to support multi-tasking knowledge workers

This paper reports on TaskTracer — a software system being designed to help highly multitasking knowledge workers rapidly locate, discover, and reuse past processes they used to successfully complete tasks. The system monitors users’ interaction with a computer, collects detailed records of users’ activities and resources accessed, associates (automatically or with users’ assistance) each interaction event with a particular task, enables users to access records of past activities and quickly restore task contexts. We present a novel Publisher-Subscriber architecture for collecting and processing users’ activity data, describe several different user interfaces tried with TaskTracer, and discuss the possibility of applying machine learning techniques to recognize/predict users’ tasks. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces — User-centered design, Prototyping. General Terms Management, Design, Human Factors. Keywo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IUI
• Authors: Anton N. Dragunov, Thomas G. Dietterich, Kevin Johnsrude, Matthew R. McLaughlin, Lida Li, Jonathan L. Herlocker
• Keywords: IUI 2005, Machine Learning, Reuse Past Processes, Software Engineering, User Interface