ABSTRACT
Large tasks can be overwhelming. For example, many people have thousands of digital photographs that languish in unorganized archives because it is difficult and time consuming to gather them into meaningful collections. Such tasks are hard to start because they seem to require long uninterrupted periods of effort to make meaningful progress. We propose the idea of selfsourcing as a way to help people to perform large personal information tasks by breaking them into manageable microtasks. Using ideas from crowdsourcing and task management, selfsourcing can help people take advantage of existing gaps in time and recover quickly from interruptions. We present several achievable selfsourcing scenarios and explore how they can facilitate information work in interruption-driven environments.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Zip file containing a PDF of the Accompanying Poster
- Bernstein, M.S., Tan, D., Smith, G., Czerwinski, M. & Horvitz, E. Personalization via friendsourcing. TOCHI 17(2), 2010. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chilton, L.B., Little, G., Edge, D., Weld, D.S. & Landay, J.A. 2013. Cascade: Crowdsourcing taxonomy creation. CHI 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cutrell, E., Czerwinski, M. & Horvitz, E. Notification, disruption, and memory: Effects of messaging interruptions on memory and performance. Interact 2001.Google Scholar
- Faste, H., Rachmel, N., Essary, R. & Sheehan, E. Brainstorm, chainstorm, cheatstorm, tweetstorm: New ideation strategies for distributed HCI design. CHI 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hart, S.G. & Staveland, L.E. Development of NASATLX (Task Load Index): Results of empirical and theoretical research. Advances in Psychology, 52, 1988.Google Scholar
- Iqbal, S. & Bailey, B. Effects of intelligent notification management on users and their tasks. CHI 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Iqbal, S. & Horvitz, E. Disruption and recovery of computing tasks: Field study, analysis, and directions. CHI 2007. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kittur, A., Nickerson, J.V., Bernstein, M.S., Gerber, E.M., Shaw, A., Zimmerman, J., Lease, M. & Horton, J.J. The future of crowd work. CSCW 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kokkalis, N., Köhn, T. Huebner, J., Lee, M., Schulze, F. & Klemmer, S.R. TaskGenies: Automatically Providing Action Plans Helps People Complete Tasks. TOCHI, 20(5), 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lasecki, W.S., Murray, K.I., White, S., Miller, R.C. & Bigham, J.P. 2011. Real-time crowd control of existing interfaces. UIST 2011. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lasecki, W.S., Teevan, J. & Kamar, E. Information extraction and manipulation threats in crowd-powered systems. CSCW 2014. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. & Harris, J. No task left behind? Examining the nature of fragmented work. CHI 2005. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Trafton, J.G., Altmann, E.M., Brock, D.P. & Mintz, F.E. Preparing to resume an interrupted task: Effects of prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal. IJHCS 58, 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Vul, E. & Pashler, H. Measuring the Crowd Within: Probabilistic Representations within Individuals. Pyschological Science, 19(7), 2008.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Selfsourcing personal tasks
Recommendations
Break It Down: A Comparison of Macro- and Microtasks
CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsA large, seemingly overwhelming task can sometimes be transformed into a set of smaller, more manageable microtasks that can each be accomplished independently. For example, it may be hard to subjectively rank a large set of photographs, but easy to ...
Chain Reactions: The Impact of Order on Microtask Chains
CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMicrotasks are small units of work designed to be completed individually, eventually contributing to a larger goal. Although microtasks can be performed in isolation, in practice people often complete a chain of microtasks within a single session. ...
Older Adults’ Motivation and Engagement with Diverse Crowdsourcing Citizen Science Tasks
Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021AbstractIn this exploratory study we evaluated the engagement, performance and preferences of older adults who interacted with different citizen science tasks. Out of 40 projects recently active on the Zooniverse platform we selected top ones to be ...
Comments