This week's speaker is Professor Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine, Dept. of Informatics.

Abstract:
Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this talk I will present empirical results that challenge this idea and suggest instead that people organize their work in terms of much larger thematically connected units of work. I will present results from fieldwork observations of 36 information workers which show that workers experience a high level of fragmentation in their work, irrespective of their organizational role. People averaged about three minutes on a task before switching tasks or being interrupted. People interrupted themselves almost as often as they were interrupted from external sources. I discuss the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. Working spheres are also quite fragmented: people continually switched working spheres and worked in more than two others before resuming work in the interrupted sphere. I also present experimental results which tested the disruption cost of interruptions, examining the role of context and media. I conclude with a discussion of some ideas for how IT can support people in maintaining continuity of their work, in light of such frequent task switching.

The Informatics Seminar is held on Friday at 3:00pm in ICS2 136, followed by a social hour at 4pm. See you there.