(Illustrated above) An architect wants to review changes in a particularly controversial section of a building project before a client meeting. She uses her building modeling application to view the version history of the section, which allows her to browse a list of related changes that have occurred in the last week.

A financial trader opens a completed transaction in his trading application to see which specific actions have been taken on the deal since he closed it. Even though he cannot change anything without making some phone calls, the history info allows him to assess whether the large and crucial deal is being handled promptly.

A scientist views the history of a single clinical sample in her lab’s information management application. All of the actions that have been taken on the sample, from its acquisition to different steps of processing and experimental manipulation, are chronologically listed, along with automatically saved version “snapshots”.

How do targeted workers currently track historical information about artifacts in the work practices that your team is striving to meditate?

What information do they record? Why?

When do targeted individuals currently refer to these historical records?

What value does historical information provide in their own efforts? In cooperative and collaborative activities?

Given workers’ current retrospective looking goals and cultural environments, which specific interaction objects and functionality concepts in your team’s sketched product ideas might valuably provide historical records and views?

What larger technology trends and advanced analogies to other products could inform your team’s ideation of concepts for meaningful historical trails and automated versioning?

What interactive pathways could be made available from within lists of recorded events? How might these actions relate to your team’s functionality concepts for active versioning and undo?

Which of your sketched functionalities, such as any significant automations, might be subject to complex, critical incidents? How might historical trails provide value after these incidents have occurred?

What novel interactive and representational approaches might your team envision to allow knowledge workers to more effectively use stored historical information about certain objects and functions?

What unwanted surveillance effects could unintentionally occur from capturing specific actions or data elements in saved historical records?

How might your team’s approaches for automatically stored histories relate to your functionality concepts supporting cooperation, collaboration, and workspace awareness?

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?