(Illustrated above) A financial trader likes that when he sends a specific offer or completed trade form as an email attachment, his trading application automatically creates the document in the professional “look” of his company.

An architect likes that she can tailor the visual conventions that her new building modeling application uses when it automatically creates design drawings, specifications, and other documentation. This flexibility allows her to maintain a strong continuity with how her studio has traditionally presented their work to long standing clients and other audiences.

A scientist is surprised by the quality of the graphs that she can export from her analysis application. Previously, to get high quality visuals that appropriately represent her lab’s work, she had imported different subsets of clinical data into separate, specialized graphing tools.

Which work products do targeted individuals currently put the most emphasis on? The least emphasis?

What roles do specific artifactual outputs, whether physical or digital, play in targeted work practices?

What audiences are different work products intended for?

Is there a separation between informal, working versions and formal, presentation versions of these artifacts? How do professional practices and standards commonly vary for different levels of formality?

How are different types of outputs currently delivered?

What do targeted knowledge workers think about their current processes for creating and communicating their own outputs? What parts of these processes require tedious effort or can frequently lead to breakdowns? Could these problems represent potential opportunities for your product?

What do recipients of work products think about current artifacts?

What work products might become the natural “take aways” of your team’s application concepts? What new types of outputs could provide value as part of your strategic approach to mediating work?

What functionality concepts might your team envision to automate standard operations in the process of creating certain work products?

What media formats could be appropriate for each type of work output that your team is envisioning? What technology implications might these choices have, in the context of current trends and existing systems?

Which of your sketched interaction objects could certain outputs be based upon? How might work products retain recognizable representational features from these sources?

How might your team valuably enhance the graphic design clarity of important work products, without any extra work on the part of their creators?

What flexibilities might targeted individuals and organizations want or need in order to make the automatic generation of work products useful and relevant in their own, local cultures of practice?

What contextual pathways to communication options could conclude the process of creating work outputs in your sketched application concepts?

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?