(Illustrated above) A financial trader, while considering different possibilities for a large trade, adds some notes to the trade form that he can look at later, when he goes to execute the deal. He wants to make sure he gives each of several different scenarios a fair testing before committing to a set of terms, and his working notes allow him to keep track of different pros and cons in order to get to the best deal.

An architect, having just concluded a brief client meeting, wants to make some quick notes in her building modeling application. She switches to the floor plan view of the project’s file and adds a number of vague, private, reminders on building elements that require her attention.

A scientist is planning a new round of experiments for a clinical study. As she thinks through the changes that she would like to make based on the outcomes of a previous round of experiments, she adds some quick notes to a number of standard templates in her lab’s information management application.

Which workplace locations or artifacts do targeted individuals currently apply informal, offloading annotations to as part of their work practices?

What role do these annotations play in workers’ individual and collaborative mental efforts? What value do they provide?

Are working notes relatively static or are they iteratively placed and revised?

Do relatively long lasting private annotations sometimes become public communications over time? What do workers think of outside viewers seeing their working notes?

Which areas of your team’s application concepts could be used in activity contexts with high levels of cognitive burden? How might users offload some of those burdens by taking advantage of direct, lightweight annotation options?

Which areas of your proposed computing tool are tied to time consuming activities where it is likely that workers will be substantially interrupted from their mental flows? How might they mark their place by using annotation functionality?

What methods of annotation could be appropriate within your team’s sketched functionality concepts, based on characterized offloading goals? Might textual notes, onscreen drawings, standardized categorical facets, attachments, or links be useful?

How could your sketched representations of working annotations contextually tie them to their onscreen subjects?

Who should be able to view whose notes, based on their permissions within your computing tool?

What useful supplemental interactivity and information might your team envision around various working annotations? For example, should workers be able to check off completed notes or set durations after which their notes will fade from prominence?

How might your team’s support for working annotations relate to your functionality concepts for automated historical records and versions?

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?