(Illustrated above) A financial trader rarely needs to actively locate an entry point to his next action within his trading application. The tool is designed to suit the flow of his work, and he feels like it is “intelligent” enough to “know” the different actions that he might want to accomplish next, providing him with quick ways to get started.

A scientist runs a standard transformation algorithm on some of her lab’s clinical data. Based on the output of this process, her analysis application presents her with a set of subsequent actions that she may want to perform next in order to further manipulate the content.

An architect copies and drags a new wall into place within her building modeling application. A menu then lists the potential associations and attributes that she could select for the new wall, based on its location relative to other elements.

How might the interrelations between operations, tasks, and larger activities that your team is striving to mediate be reflected in the structural flows of your application concepts?

How might your team situate your sketched functionalities within these essential flows?

What functional areas will contain volumes of content that could benefit from clear, categorical route suggestions?

What might it be like to navigate through different pathways as part of targeted work practices? Which of your team’s pathway ideas could be more likely to provide workers with a sense of compelling engagement and accomplishment?

How could interactive routes be made to feel as if they are tailored to the inherent flow of work practice, disclosing content and functionality progressively in order to reduce experienced complexity?

How might the interaction models of your team’s application concepts communicate available pathways of action to users? Would workers benefit from a “map” or is it enough to present state based, contextually relevant pathways?

Where could important pathway options be contextually tied into your sketched functionality concepts?

How important is it for workers to have an understanding of where they are in a process? What wayfinding cues could be appropriate in different scenarios?

How directive should interactive pathways be? Where could constrictive, standardizing pathways undesirably limit workers’ efforts?

How might the availability of interactive pathways be influenced by application and interaction object states?

What might the experience be like when “turning to” your team’s product from work practices that are accomplished outside of the screen, or when transitioning away from your product into other parts of work activity?

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?