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Activity-Centered Design and Management: Analyzing, Designing, and Monitoring Activities

This article discusses the importance of explicitly representing activities in order to effectively manage and coordinate them. It explores various representations of activity and proposes an activity-centered work environment that integrates personal and social activities. The article also highlights the value of managing personal activities, coordinating interpersonal activities, personalizing business processes, and reusing and designing activities.

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Activity-Centered Design and Management: Analyzing, Designing, and Monitoring Activities

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  1. Activity Analysis, Design, and Management Thomas P. Moran IBM Almaden Research Center San Jose, California USA Symposium on the Foundations of Interaction Design Interaction Design Institute Ivrea November 12-13, 2003

  2. Artifact + Person + Motivation Activity in Interaction Design Interaction = Meta-Activity Use Activity Context Activities

  3. Many Views of Activity • Behavioral / Social Theory Distributed cognition, ethnography, activity theory, etc • Timestream (history) • Activity Management (things to do) • Workflow Process design, control, manage • Organizational Change (process re-engineering) analyze, design, monitor, adapt

  4. Many Representations of Activity • Behavioral / Social Theory  account • Timestream (history)  log • Activity Management (things to do)  surrogate • Workflow Process  program • Organizational Change  analysis (process re-engineering)  plan

  5. Activity Management overviewing, orienting organizing, planning, scheduling reminding, alerting contextual opportunistic triggering setting up executing peripherally monitoring, switching reporting, documenting

  6. Hypothesis In order to be managed:activities need to be explicitly representedas personal / social / organizational entities. Activity-Centered Work Environment: • Ephemeral activities  represented activities • Juggling tools  carrying out activities • Managing information  managing activities

  7. Analysis

  8. Rationale for Activity Centeredness Studies of time management show … • People put a lot of effort into • Planning longer-term goals (periodically) • Managing shorter-term tasks (continuously) • Multiplicity of tools are used – but people are not satisfied • Electronic: lack of coordination, availability, reliability • Physical are better (paper, post-its, walls, desks) • ToDo items are distributed in the natural flow of work • In both physical and electronic space • Calendar and email is used to manage ToDos

  9. Need Remember Plan Execute Report Planning is fuzzy. Reminding is contextually distributed. Activities are intermittent. Activities need to be accounted for. An Activity in Time

  10. Coordinate: delegate, wait, notify. Be aware: peripheral activities. Adapt: respond to new, shuffle tasks. Manage contexts: setup and switch. Multiple Activities

  11. An Activity… …consists of mental/physical/computational actions: • at different time scales (minutes…months) • by one or more people (agents) • having coherence • conceptually (goal-directed) • contextually (eg, a group meeting) • related to other activities • using resources (people, tools, information) • in a socio/cultural/organizational context • from the perspective of an individual

  12. Example of an Activity:Chairing an Awards Committee Run awards committee • Set up committee • Decide on winners • Announce, coordinate, present, etc. • Hand it off

  13. people email documents tightly coordinated activity loose, parallel activities scheduled, sequential activities reuse and refine hand off

  14. Design

  15. Original PlanningTableau Intentions Commitments Possibilities

  16. Categories Contexts Communication / Schedule Revised Tableau

  17. Prototype Activity Tableau

  18. Activity Tableau (current)

  19. Some Actual Activity Spaces

  20. Tableau Integrated into Workplace

  21. Plan + Calendar Plan Activity Strip Activity Shelf Mobile Activities Activities Today Integrated Tableau Configurations

  22. Unification

  23. Levels of Activity Representations Enterprise Business process workflows Team/group Places, project plans, bug lists, … Interpersonal Email, “instant collaboration” Personal ToDos, calendars Levels involve: • scope of interaction • activity initiation, management, access, accounting • resource administration • degree of design

  24. Levels of Activity Representations Enterprise Team/group Interpersonal Personal BAM  regularize, monitor TAM  collect, share IPAM  coordinate PAM  plan, remember, respond Levels need to be integrated … … using activity structures as the common construct

  25. Top down Bottom up Levels of Activity Representations Enterprise Team/group Interpersonal Personal Levels need to be integrated … … using activity structures as the common construct

  26. Facets of Activity-Centeredness • Managing Personal Activities • Coordinating Inter-Personal Activities • Personalizing Business Processes • Reusing and Designing Activities

  27. Managing Personal Activities ToDos must be extremely lightweight and flexible. • Provide an activity overview for planning, monitoring,organizing, … • Distribute activity structures among applications, components, and devices • Allow emergent activities to be represented easily, but optionally • Collect resources into activity structures both manually and automatically

  28. John’s Workplace JohninformallysharesactivitywithJane. Jane’s Workplace Coordinating Interpersonal Activity

  29. John’s Workplace Jane’s Workplace Activity Activity Activity Start End Activity Activity Business Process Personalizing Business Processes Distributing control and adaptation:1. Process generates activity for John.2. John alters activity to adapt it.3. John feeds back alterations, as well as results, to process.

  30. Reusing and Designing Activities • Reusing activity structures • Making a copy • Using it as a template • Designing by doing • Refining • Parameterizing • Publishing • Evolving

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