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, 2003
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Activity in Interaction Design
Interaction = Artifact + Person + Motivation
Meta-Activity
Use Activity
Context Activities
Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 2003
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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, 2003
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Many Representations of Activity
•
•
•
•
•
Behavioral / Social Theory
Timestream (history)
Activity Management (things to do)
Workflow Process
Organizational Change
(process re-engineering)
Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 2003
 account
 log
 surrogate
 program
 analysis
 plan
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Activity Management
overviewing, orienting
organizing, planning, scheduling
reminding, alerting
contextual opportunistic triggering
setting up
executing
peripherally monitoring, switching
reporting, documenting
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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
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Analysis
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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
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An Activity in Time
Need
Remember
Plan
Execute
Report
Planning is fuzzy.
Activities are intermittent.
Reminding is contextually
distributed.
Activities need to be accounted for.
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Multiple Activities
Coordinate: delegate, wait, notify.
Adapt: respond to new, shuffle tasks.
Be aware: peripheral activities.
Manage contexts: setup and switch.
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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
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Example of an Activity:
Chairing an Awards Committee
Run awards committee
1.
2.
3.
4.
Set up committee
Decide on winners
Announce, coordinate, present, etc.
Hand it off
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people
email
documents
scheduled,
tightly
loose,
reuse
coordinated
parallel
hand
sequential
andoff
activities
refine
activity
activities
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Design
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Original Planning Tableau
Intentions
Commitments
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Possibilities
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Revised Tableau
Categories
Contexts
Activity / Tom Moran / Ivrea Symposium / November 12-13, 2003
Communication / Schedule
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Prototype Activity Tableau
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Activity Tableau (current)
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Some Actual Activity Spaces
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Tableau Integrated into Workplace
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Integrated Tableau Configurations
Plan
Activity Shelf
Activities Today
Plan + Calendar
Activity Strip
Mobile Activities
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Unification
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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
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Levels of Activity Representations
Enterprise
BAM  regularize, monitor
Team/group
TAM  collect, share
Interpersonal IPAM  coordinate
Personal
PAM  plan, remember, respond
Levels need to be integrated …
… using activity structures as the common construct
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Levels of Activity Representations
Enterprise
Team/group
Interpersonal
Personal
Top down
Bottom up
Levels need to be integrated …
… using activity structures as the common construct
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Facets of Activity-Centeredness
•
•
•
•
Managing Personal Activities
Coordinating Inter-Personal Activities
Personalizing Business Processes
Reusing and Designing Activities
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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
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Coordinating Interpersonal Activity
John’s Workplace
John
informally
shares
activity
with
Jane.
Jane’s Workplace
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Personalizing Business Processes
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.
Jane’s Workplace
Activity
Start
Activity
Activity
Activity
End
Activity
Business Process
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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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