(Illustrated above) A scientist sets up a new clinical research study in her lab’s information management application. She creates a study file, a revised lab automation procedure, and onscreen instantiations for several clinical samples and test tubes that are physically present in her lab.

A financial trader’s work primarily focuses on individual trades, though his trading application subdivides each deal into several different subcomponents that are meaningful for certain tasks.

An architect uses various modeling tools, standard 3D shapes, templated components, and many other onscreen elements to design buildings with her building modeling application.

What inventory of artifacts from targeted individuals’ environments might your team consider as potential elements and references for your computing tool?

Who uses each type of artifact, and how do they use them? How does usage vary across targeted organizations?

What characteristics do workers value in the objects that they currently use? What emotional connections do they inspire?

Are these artifacts primarily physical, primarily digital, or a combination of the two? How permanent or malleable are they?

How have these artifacts evolved into their current state within particular organizations or larger professions? What can be learned from recent evolutionary steps in these historical trajectories?

What nomenclature do targeted workers from different organizations and market segments currently use in reference to specific artifacts?

Which existing objects might benefit from meaningful subdivision or elaboration within the setting of your team’s application concepts?

How could useful representational characteristics of certain artifacts be preserved or even enhanced?

Which existing artifacts could be difficult to effectively translate into a cohesive and well resolved onscreen object? How might these challenges impact your team’s sketched functionality concepts?

What conventional interaction objects, found in many computing tools, are implied in your ideas about mediating work?

How might your team invoke workers’ valuable conceptions of known artifacts as part of new interactions and representational forms?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?