Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Activity in Interaction Design Interaction = Artifact+ Person+ Motivation Use Activity Context Activities Meta-Activity

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Activity Management overviewing, orienting organizing, planning, scheduling reminding, alerting contextual opportunistic triggering setting up executing peripherally monitoring, switching reporting, documenting

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Hypothesis In order to be managed: activities need to be explicitly represented as personal / social / organizational entities. Activity-Centered Work Environment: Ephemeral activities  represented activities Juggling tools  carrying out activities Managing information  managing activities

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Analysis

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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 is used to manage ToDos

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, An Activity in Time Need Planning is fuzzy. Reminding is contextually distributed. Activities are intermittent. Activities need to be accounted for. PlanExecute Remember Report

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Multiple Activities Coordinate: delegate, wait, notify. Be aware: peripheral activities. Adapt: respond to new, shuffle tasks. Manage contexts: setup and switch.

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Example of an Activity: Chairing an Awards Committee Run awards committee 1.Set up committee 2.Decide on winners 3.Announce, coordinate, present, etc. 4.Hand it off

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, people documents tightly coordinated activity loose, parallel activities scheduled, sequential activities reuse and refinehand off

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Design

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Intentions Commitments Possibilities Original Planning Tableau

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Revised Tableau Categories Contexts Communication / Schedule

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Prototype Activity Tableau

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Activity Tableau (current)

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Some Actual Activity Spaces

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Tableau Integrated into Workplace

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, PlanPlan + CalendarActivity StripActivity ShelfActivities TodayMobile Activities Integrated Tableau Configurations

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Unification

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Enterprise Business process workflows Team/group Places, project plans, bug lists, … Interpersonal , “instant collaboration” Personal ToDos, calendars Levels involve: scope of interaction activity initiation, management, access, accounting resource administration degree of design Levels of Activity Representations

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, BAM  regularize, monitor TAM  collect, share IPAM  coordinate PAM  plan, remember, respond Levels need to be integrated … … using activity structures as the common construct Levels of Activity Representations Enterprise Team/group Interpersonal Personal

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Enterprise Team/group Interpersonal Personal Levels need to be integrated … … using activity structures as the common construct Levels of Activity Representations Top down Bottom up

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Facets of Activity-Centeredness Managing Personal Activities Coordinating Inter-Personal Activities Personalizing Business Processes Reusing and Designing Activities

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 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

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Coordinating Interpersonal Activity Jane’s Workplace John’s Workplace John informally shares activity with Jane.

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Personalizing Business Processes Activity StartEnd Business Process Jane’s Workplace John’s Workplace 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.

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, Reusing and Designing Activities Reusing activity structures Making a copy Using it as a template Designing by doing Refining Parameterizing Publishing Evolving

Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13,