Support for activity-based computing in a personal computing operating system

Research has shown that computers are notoriously bad at supporting the management of parallel activities and interruptions, and that mobility increases the severity of these problems. This paper presents activity-based computing (ABC) which supplements the prevalent data- and application-oriented computing paradigm with technologies for handling multiple, parallel and mobile work activities. We present the design and implementation of ABC support embedded in the Windows XP operating system. This includes replacing the Windows Taskbar with an Activity Bar, support for handling Windows applications, a zoomable user interface, and support for moving activities across different computers. We report an evaluation of this Windows XP ABC system which is based on a multi-method approach, where perceived ease-of-use and usefulness was evaluated together with rich interview material. This evaluation showed that users found the ABC XP extension easy to use and likely to be useful in their own work.

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