In personal task management, individual tasks are susceptible to failure at various stages due to failures in prospective memory, information fragmentation, and/or cognitive overload. To alleviate the troubles that occur in personal task management, people use various tools such as notifications and external memory aids, but there is still room for improvement in regards to maintaining distributed cognitive artifacts such as calendars and to-do lists. Improvement in staying abreast of this personal task information as opposed to being alerted of it in individual instances was the topic of exploration in this work. TaskAmbient is an ambient information display system that was designed to address these problems. TaskAmbient supports retention of individual task knowledge as well as retention of task knowledge in a user's different areas of responsibility. With this tool, I observed usage to verify or deny its ability to support prospective memory and combat the problems associated with information fragmentation and cognitive overload in respect to personal task management. In this research, studies were conducted to learn about personal task management practices and how TaskAmbient was used. In conducting these studies, I found that TaskAmbient provided value in retaining task information and staying aware of tasks in a user's various areas of responsibility. TaskAmbient showed the extendibility to other domains of personal information management. / Master of Science

This study examines adolescent students at an American international school and observes student use of social networking programs as well as physical actions in the search process. The study specifically observed multitasking behavior and organizational skills among students, as well as linkages made through social networking sites. Student observations, student interviews, analysis of Facebook entries, and a survey on multitasking yielded rich data. Students appear to be far more organized than previously suggested in the literature, and in this study, the organization proved to be largely self-taught. Students used their social networks to build a kind of group expertise that compensated for their youthful naivety. Students exhibited self-control within the search to the degree that they could focus on what they wanted to find, and they used heuristics—mental shortcuts—to achieve what they needed. Searches also suggest creativity in that students were flexible in their search methods and used a number of tools to gather information. Students could balance the needs of the academic or imposed search with their own online lives, meaning that they made compensations for social media and media multitasking when it was deemed necessary.

A memory aid, that used brief (33ms) presentations of previously learned information (target words), was assessed on its ability to reinforce memory for target words while the subject was performing an interference task. The interference task required subjects to learn new words and thus interfered with their memory of the target words. The brief presentation (momentary memory priming) was hypothesized to refresh the subjects' memory of the target words. 143 subjects, in a within subject design, were given a 33ms presentation of the target memory words during the interference task in a treatment condition and a blank 33ms presentation in the control condition. The primary dependent measure, memory loss over the interference trial, was not significantly different between the two conditions. The memory prime did not appear to hinder the subjects' performance on the interference task. This paper describes the experiment and the results along with suggestions for future research.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel Andresen / The aim of this project is to develop an Android application for managing and organizing daily activities. Mobile application development is a growing trend in computer industry. Lot of desktop applications is [i.e. are] now becoming available as mobile applications with increasing demand in market. Android is one of the most popular platforms in mobile technology and gives lot of space for creative development as it is open source. There are various discussion forums and official Android development support websites that encourages mobile and tablet application development. The Quick Organizer application provides three main features for managing and organizing everyday tasks. 1. Calendar with smooth navigation buttons and flexible layout to view all calendar events. This calendar synchronizes with Google calendar and calendar application in Android device and allows user to create events in all the user calendar accounts. 2. Notes management for creating new note, viewing all notes for current month and search notes for the user account that synchronizes with the Ever Notes application. 3. Tasks management to create daily to-do lists with deadline for every task. The user can see all the tasks created with clear demarcation between complete and incomplete tasks with help of strike-out tasks when completed.

The engagement in multiple activities in the workplace leads to the challenge of managing several tasks. When managing multiple tasks, it may be difficult to remember to complete all tasks. Within an operations team at a hedge fund, there are demands that all trades are reported by the end of the day to the correct prime brokerage. This thesis examines the research question: How can a GUI be designed to remind and aid users to verify that trade information has been managed correctly? The research was conducted at a financial company, and focused on improving the workflow for one of the company’s clients and its operations team. To identify the challenges of a financial operator, contextual inquiries were conducted, followed by a design workshop to generate design ideas. The results were used as inspiration for the prototype of a GUI. The prototype was evaluated through cognitive walkthroughs, expert review, and with end users. The prototype was found to aid financial operators to verify if there was any work left, but the reminder aspect would need to be examined with a real system during an extended period. / Att engagera sig i flertalet aktiviteter på en arbetsplats leder till utmaningen att hantera många uppgifter. När det finns många uppgifter att hantera, kan det vara svårt att komma ihåg att slutföra alla uppgifter. Inom ett operationsteam på en hedgefond finns krav att alla värdepappersaffärer ska vara rapporterade innan dagens slut till rätt huvudmäklarfirma (prime brokerage). Denna uppsats undersöker forskningsfrågan: Hur kan ett GUI designas för att påminna och underlätta för användaren att verifiera att information om värdepappersaffärer har hanterats korrekt? Forskningen genomfördes på ett finansiellt företag och fokuserade på att underlätta arbetsflödet för en av företagets kunder och dess operationsteam. För att identifiera utmaningarna för en finansiell operatör genomfördes kontextuella intervjuer, vilka följdes av en designworkshop för att generera designidéer. Resultaten användes som inspiration till en prototyp för ett GUI. Prototypen utvärderades genom kognitiv genomgång (cognitive walkthrough), expertgranskning och med slutanvändare. Prototypen ansågs underlätta för finansiella operatörer att verifiera om det fanns kvarvarande uppgifter, men påminnelseaspekten skulle behöva undersökas ytterligare med ett fullt utvecklat system under en längre period.

Social media mechanisms, such as wikis, blogs, tags and feeds, have transformed the way we communicate, work and play online. Many of these technologies have made their way into collaborative software engineering processes and modern software development platforms, either as an adjunct or integrated into a wide range of tools ranging from code editors and issue trackers to IDEs and web-based portals. Based on the results of several large scale empirical studies, this thesis presents findings on how social media artifacts, such as tags, feeds and dashboards, bridge lightweight and heavyweight task management in software development. Furthermore, this work shows how blogs, developer wikis and Q&A websites are changing the way software is documented. Based on these findings, the thesis describes a model that characterizes social media artifacts along several dimensions, such as content type, intended audience, and review mechanisms. The role of social media artifacts in collaborative software development lies in the timely dissemination of scenarios and concerns to a diverse audience through a process of implicit and informal collaboration, triggered by questions from users or articulation work. These findings lead to tool and process recommendations as well as the implementation of tools that leverage social media artifacts, and they indicate that tool support inspired by social media may play an important role in improving collaborative software development practices. / Graduate

[pt] Novos contextos da computação distribuída reforçam a necessidade de abstra ções de programação que favoreçam a comunicação assíncrona e o tratamento de tarefas concorrentes. Modelos de programação dirigido a eventos ou baseado em threads incorporam decisões sobre como tratar essas questões, em cada caso apresentando vantagens e desvantagens. Normalmente, a opção pelo modelo mais adequado para um determinado contexto ou problema exige que o programador lide diretamente com as desvantagens inerentes a esse modelo, tornando a tarefa de desenvolvimento de aplicações mais complexa. Nesse trabalho aprofundamos a discussão sobre como combinar as vantagens dos modelos tradicionais de programação para oferecer uma interface de programação mais simples para o programador. Exploramos o uso de operações de comunicação não- bloqueante e de um mecanismo básico de gerência cooperativa de tarefas baseado na construção de co-rotinas. Usando esses conceitos implementamos: (1) um conjunto de operações que facilitam o desenvolvimento de aplicações com a estrutura cliente/servidor sobre uma base de comunicação assíncrona; e (2) uma interface de programação mais apropriada para o TinyOS, o estado da arte em sistema operacional para redes de sensores. / [en] New contexts of distributed computing emphasize the need of programming abstractions able to deal with asynchronous communication and concurrent tasks. Event-driven or threaded programming models are able to deal with these issues, but each model presents particular advantages and problems. Normally, when choosing the model more appropriate for a context or problem, the programmer must deal directly with the difficulties related to this model, making the development task more complex. In this work we discuss a way to combine the advantages of the traditional programming models in order to support a programming interface more suitable for the programmer.We explore asynchronous communication and cooperative task management based on the co-routine construction. By using these concepts, we implement: (1) a set of operations for building client/server applications upon an asynchronous communication basis; and (2) a more appropriate programming interface for TinyOS, the state of the art of operating system for sensor networks.

abstract: The 21st-century professional or knowledge worker spends much of the working day engaging others through electronic communication. The modes of communication available to knowledge workers have rapidly increased due to computerized technology advances: conference and video calls, instant messaging, e-mail, social media, podcasts, audio books, webinars, and much more. Professionals who think for a living express feelings of stress about their ability to respond and fear missing critical tasks or information as they attempt to wade through all the electronic communication that floods their inboxes. Although many electronic communication tools compete for the attention of the contemporary knowledge worker, most professionals use an electronic personal information management (PIM) system, more commonly known as an e-mail application and often the ubiquitous Microsoft Outlook program. The aim of this research was to provide knowledge workers with solutions to manage the influx of electronic communication that arrives daily by studying the workers in their working environment. This dissertation represents a quest to understand the current strategies knowledge workers use to manage their e-mail, and if modification of e-mail management strategies can have an impact on productivity and stress levels for these professionals. Today’s knowledge workers rarely work entirely alone, justifying the importance of also exploring methods to improve electronic communications within teams. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering 2018

Currently, Pervasive Computing is focused on the development of programmable and interactive environments, which are intended to help the user in daily activities. The health system of the future envisages the use of Pervasive Computing as a way of optimizing and automating clinical activities. Under such perspective, the present study has tried to add, in a middleware for pervasive environment management, the supporting for management and accomplishment of clinical tasks (pervasive applications that help physicians perform their activities), fulfilling some requirements of activities-oriented computing, and creating a tool that will help physicians in their daily tasks. In modeling of the tasks management system, the middleware EXEHDA Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications has been used to manage the pervasive environment where tasks will be performed. Due to the flexible features of EXEHDA, as the integration of new services, the supporting of the middleware to the new tasks management was added as a new subsystem, composed by the services that implement the new features. So, the main contribution of present study was the modeling of the architecture for the new subsystem of EXEHDA, responsible for management of tasks in pervasive environment. As a secondary contribution, was developed a prototype of the core of this new subsystem (a service for managing tasks), already providing same integration within other services modeled for the architecture. This prototype can be used, during the course of the ClinicSpaces Project, as a basis for testing and evaluation of other services and to facilitate the participation of professionals from other areas in the project. / Atualmente, a Computação Pervasiva está direcionada ao desenvolvimento de ambientes programáveis e interativos, os quais auxiliarão o usuário em suas atividades diárias. O sistema de saúde do futuro prevê o uso da Computação Pervasiva como forma de otimizar e automatizar as atividades clínicas. Tendo em vista essa perspectiva, neste trabalho buscou-se adicionar, a um middleware de gerenciamento do ambiente pervasivo, o suporte ao gerenciamento e à execução de tarefas clínicas (aplicações pervasivas que auxiliam o clínico a realizar suas atividades), atendendo a alguns requisitos da computação orientada a atividades, e criando uma ferramenta para auxiliar os clínicos em suas atividades diárias. Na modelagem do sistema de gerenciamento de tarefas, o middleware EXEHDA Execution Environment for Highly Distributed Applications foi utilizado para gerenciar o ambiente pervasivo no qual as tarefas irão executar. Devido às características flexíveis do EXEHDA quanto à integração de novos serviços, o suporte do middleware ao gerenciamento de tarefas foi adicionado através de um novo subsistema, composto pelos serviços que implementam as novas funcionalidades. Portanto, a principal contribuição deste trabalho foi a modelagem da arquitetura do novo subsistema do EXEHDA, responsável pelo gerenciamento de tarefas no ambiente pervasivo. Como contribuição secundária, foi desenvolvido um protótipo do núcleo desse novo subsistema (um serviço para gerenciamento de tarefas), já prevendo certa interação com os demais serviços modelados para a arquitetura. Esse protótipo poderá ser usado, durante o andamento do projeto ClinicSpaces, como base para teste e avaliação dos outros serviços, bem como, para facilitar a participação de profissionais de outras áreas no prosseguimento do projeto.

To improve the system usability and assist the user during the execution of their daily clinical tasks, were designed new components and services to realize the task inference in the ClinicSpace architecture. The ClinicSpace project, currently being developed by the GMob of the PPGI/UFSM, aims to build a pilot tool that allows the modeling of the clinical tasks by the physician and their automatic management. To model and develop an inference service to this architecture is the main goal of the work described in the current dissertation. To realize the task inference, were used the task execution history of each user together with the present characteristics of the environment during the tasks executions. In this way, is possible to trace the profile of each user, knowing which functionalities will be necessary for him in the near future. With the capture of the environment information during the task execution, was used the C4.5 algorithm to infer, foresee, the next task to be executed. Together with the constant environment monitoring, were detected patterns that allows suppose the future execution of a task, helping the system utilization. The system presents the inferred tasks as suggestion in the graphical interface to not take automatic decisions, taking the user role, predicting a general improvement in the system usability. To validate the developed architecture, were made performance analyses of the inference mechanism, resulting in a small interference of the execution time of the whole system. / De forma a melhorar a usabilidade do sistema e auxiliar o usuário durante a execução de suas tarefas clínicas cotidianas foram projetados novos componentes e serviços para realizar a inferência de tarefas na arquitetura ClinicSpace. O projeto ClinicSpace, em desenvolvimento no GMob do PPGI/UFSM, visa construir uma ferramenta-piloto que permita a programação das atividades clínicas pelo próprio médico e o gerenciamento automático destas. Modelar e implementar um serviço de inferência para essa arquitetura é o objetivo principal do trabalho descrito nesta dissertação. Como base para a inferência das tarefas de cada usuário, utilizou-se o histórico de execução de tarefas juntamente com as características presentes no ambiente durante a execução. Dessa forma, é possível traçar o perfil de cada usuário, conhecendo-se quais funcionalidades serão necessárias a ele no futuro. A partir da captura de informações do ambiente durante a execução das tarefas, foi utilizado o algoritmo C4.5 para inferir, prever, a próxima tarefa a ser executada. Em conjunto com o constante monitoramento do ambiente são detectados os padrões que levam a supor a execução futura de uma tarefa, auxiliando na utilização do sistema. A partir da tarefa inferida, o sistema a apresenta como sugestão na interface gráfica de forma a não tomar decisões automáticas em substituição ao papel do usuário, prevendo-se uma melhoria geral na usabilidade do sistema. Como forma de validação da arquitetura desenvolvida foram feitas análises de desempenho do mecanismo de inferência, obtendo-se o resultado de baixa interferência nos tempos de execução do sistema como um todo.