Inaugural online book | Application Concepting Series No. 1
100 Ideas for Envisioning Powerful, Engaging, and Productive User Experiences in Knowledge Work
Opening thoughts Table of contents Preface / Publication information Introduction: The case for Application Envisioning Primer on example knowledge work domains A. Exploring work mediation and determining scope (9) B. Defining interaction objects (10) C. Establishing an application framework (10) D. Considering workers’ attentions (7) E. Providing opportunities to offload effort (6)   E1. Offloading long term memory effort   E2. Offloading short term memory effort   E3. Automation of low level operations   E4. Automation of task or activity scenarios   E5. Visibility into automation   E6. Internal locus of control F. Enhancing information representation (11) G. Clarifying central interactions (7) H. Supporting outcome exploration and cognitive tracing (4) I. Working with volumes of information (7) J. Facilitating communication (7) K. Promoting integration into work practice (13) L. Pursuing aesthetic refinement (5) M. Planning connection with use (4) Glossary Bibliography About the author Download E-Book or Order Softcover Book In addition to this website, Working through Screens is available in several other formats: - Softcover print on demand books - Free letter size .pdf - Free large format .pdf - Free "Idea Cards" .pdf View all Working through Screens Formats Contact Our Consulting Studio info@FlashbulbInteraction.com 206.280.3135 Studio Updates From our FlashbulbUX Twitter feed:   Follow FlashbulbUX on Twitter Feedback on Working through Screens? Email us your thoughts or Twitter @FlashbulbUX		Idea Category E. Providing Opportunities to Offload Effort Valued computing tools can desirably reduce burdens in knowledge work while at the same time promoting a sense of engagement and agency. Designing for such useful reductions requires a deliberate and critical understanding of current and potential efforts in work practice. During application envisioning, product teams can map workers’ consistent and routine burdens in order to locate potential opportunities for supporting technologies. By focusing on how effort might be offloaded to an onscreen tool, teams can highlight cases where higher order tasks and user experiences might transformatively replace unwanted actions and cognitive load. All of us face limitations in what we can accomplish. There are only so many hours in a day, and our human minds can, roughly speaking, only process or actively remember so much at any one time. Knoweldge workers make use of valued tools to get more done and to make their lives feel simpler. People can become adept at arranging and manipulating the world around them to make their actions easier, thereby improving their ability to accomplish certain outcomes. By appropriating useful artifacts into their practices, individuals and their organizations can positively transform work that would otherwise require tedious labor or complex mental operations. Product teams can envision opportunities for knowledge workers to distribute effort among themselves, their colleagues, and their computing tools. High level ideation around “what people are good at and what computers are good at”, while useful, may not drive teams to sufficiently consider the particulars of workers’ specialized motives and local cultures. To arrive at powerful and valuable offloading options, teams can focus on possible intersections of specific burdens in work practices and potential technology responses that could either alleviate these burdens or augment workers’ related abilities. This category contains 6 of the 100 application envisioning ideas in this book:   E1. Offloading long term memory effort   E2. Offloading short term memory effort   E3. Automation of low level operations   E4. Automation of task or activity scenarios   E5. Visibility into automation   E6. Internal locus of control Product teams can use these ideas to explore potential transformations of work practice through the reduction of specific memory burdens and appropriate automation of operations, tasks, or larger activities. Aging workforces within a product’s demographics, who may be experiencing decreases in some of their faculties, may find such offloading options to be especially valuable. The central notion of this category is most closely related to the “Exploring work mediation and determining scope” (A), “Considering workers’ attentions” (D), “Supporting outcome exploration and cognitive tracing” (H), and “Facilitating communication” (J) categories. < PREVIOUS PAGE  |  NEXT PAGE > Back to top  |  View Table of Contents All original contents of Working through Screens online book are subject to the creative commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) unless otherwise noted. Please attribute the work to “Jacob Burghardt / FLASHBULB INTERACTION Consultancy.”