(Illustrated above) A scientist creates files for a series of samples in her lab’s information management application based on a template of attributes that she will use throughout a clinical study. She knows that these attribute consistencies will remove problems downstream, when her lab’s technicians have actually run these experiments and she wants to analyze the resulting collection of data in her analysis application.

An architect uses her building modeling application to create a series of templated objects that satisfy some difficult project requirements. Creating these templates in advance will reduce work later, when these standard objects will appear repeatedly throughout the building’s design.

A financial trader exporting data from his trading application chooses from a menu of templates for different export content and layout formats. The ability to set up standard export options saves him a lot of time, especially when compared to manually reformatting each export file.

Where do targeted individuals currently take steps to promote valued sameness in artifacts as part of the work practices that your team is striving to mediate?

How do workers categorize and name common variants of workplace artifacts? How do these classification schemes vary across targeted organizations?

What value do these consistencies and categories provide?

Which “primary” interaction objects in your team’s application concepts could become high volume and the repeated focus of work?

Which object creation tasks could potentially burden workers with data entry efforts?

How might templates be clearly and visibly differentiated from the type of interaction objects that they serve as a “mold” for?

Which of an object’s information attributes should probably not be incorporated into a template’s standardizing influence?

How might additional data entry effort, after an object has been created from a template, be clarified or lessened?

What pathways of action could flow out of the creation of an object from a template?

How might users trace an individual interaction object back to the template that it was created from?

What functionality concepts can your team envision to allow workers to clearly manage their various templates as specific workplace needs evolve over time?

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?