(Illustrated above) An architect selects and copies a section of a building model, then pastes it into an email that she will send to an acoustical consultant who is estimating some specific costs. When the consultant receives the file, he is able to open it in a different 3D modeling tool, where only the specific section of the building under discussion appears on his screen.

A financial trader copies content from a series of forms in his trading application and pastes it into a spreadsheet for further analysis. Since he knows his spreadsheet application very well, he often prefers to work this way, even when other products provide “spreadsheet like” functionality.

A scientist selects several rows in a table within her analysis application and drags them into a presentation document. The dragged content then appears in the body of the document with the same table formatting.

Which computing tools do targeted individuals primarily use, given the larger constellation of technologies that are available to them?

What role do each of these tools play within your team’s targeted tasks and larger activities?

How do knowledge workers currently coordinate their various onscreen applications in order to accomplish their goals in different scenarios?

Which interoperations frequently result from lightweight, spur of the moment choices?

What breakdowns and errors can occur in these interoperations? Could these problems represent potential opportunities for your product?

Where might your team’s sketched strategic directions suggest “open” and networked approaches to other technologies in targeted workers’ environments? Where might they suggest “closed” approaches?

What market trends and technological realities might your team consider while envisioning possibilities for dynamic interactions between specific computing tools?

What attitudes and expectations do targeted individuals and their organizations have regarding seamless interactivity as a means of bridging their various applications?

Which of your sketched interaction objects and functionality concepts might provide value in the context of other computing tools?

What interaction objects from other computing tools might provide value in the context of your team’s application concepts?

Where might existing convections for lightweight inter-application interactivity, such as “cut and paste” and “drag and drop,” play a role in your functionality concepts?

What novel interaction approaches might your team envision for specific bridging operations?

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?