The task-focused interface is a type of

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

which extends the

desktop metaphor In computing, the desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users interact more easily with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the computer monitor as if it is ...

of the

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

to make tasks, not files and folders, the primary unit of interaction. Instead of showing entire hierarchies of information, such as a tree of documents, a task-focused interface shows the subset of the tree that is relevant to the task-at-hand. This addresses the problem of

information overload Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, or information anxiety) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and Decision making, effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, and is ...

when dealing with large hierarchies, such as those in

software system A software system is a system of intercommunicating software component, components based on software forming part of a computer system (a combination of Computer hardware, hardware and software). It "consists of a number of separate Computer progr ...

s or large sets of documents. The task-focused interface is composed of a mechanism which allows the user to specify the task being worked on and to switch between active tasks, a model of the task context such as a degree-of-interest (DOI) ranking, a focusing mechanism to filter or highlight the relevant documents. The task-focused interface has been validated with statistically significant increases to

knowledge worker Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include ICT professionals, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, designers, public accountants, lawyers, librarians, archivists, editors, and ...

productivity. It has been broadly adopted by programmers and is a key part of the

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

. The technology is also referred to as the "task context" model and the "task-focused programming" paradigm.

History

The task-focused interface was invented by Mik Kersten during his PhD at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

in 2004. Kersten previously worked on the

aspect-oriented programming In computing, aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns. It does so by adding behavior to existing code (an advice) ''without'' modifying t ...

team at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

and combined the idea of crosscutting aspects and

task management Task management is the process of overseeing a task through its lifecycle. It involves planning, testing, tracking, and reporting. Task management can help individuals achieve goals or enable groups of individuals to collaborate and share know ...

. Early precursors to the task-focused interface include the attention-reactive interface metaphor and the "Edit & Read Wear" document editing tool. The first description of the task-focused interface concepts appeared in a 2005 AOSD conference publication. The first implementation of the task-focused interface started as an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

project called Eclipse Mylyn, created in March 2005. The technology evolved with input and contributions from thousands of open source community developers. In 2006, a research group and the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay, British Columbia, Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Established in 1903 as Victoria College, British Columbia, Victoria Col ...

demonstrated the utility of the task-focused interface and degree-of-interest model for

ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...

visualization. In 2007, the Mylyn implementation was bundled with the majority of Eclipse IDE distributions. In 2008, alternate implementations of task-focused interface became available, including NetBeans Cubeon, and the Tasktop Pro tool for

project manager A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the Project planning, planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined star ...

s. By 2009, most

agile software development Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to software development, developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by ''The Agile Alliance'', a group of 17 software practitioners, in 2001. As documented ...

and

application lifecycle management Application lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management (governance, development, and maintenance) of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, ...

tools provided integration with Mylyn. In 2011 NBTaskFocus got introduced which provided Mylyn like task-focused features in NetBeans IDE.

Technology

The primary goal of a task-focused interface is to scope the information shown in a computer application to just that relevant to the user's current task. Based on the user's interactions, each uniquely identifiable element of information available to the user is assigned a degree-of-interest (DOI) ranking. The more frequently and recently a user has interacted with an element of information, the higher the DOI for that element for that task. The DOI rankings for the information elements can be used within a task-focused interface in four ways. Elements below a certain DOI threshold can be ''filtered'' to reduce the number of elements presented. Elements can be ''ranked'' according to their DOI; for instance, the elements of highest interest can be shown at the top of a list. The elements can be ''decorated'' with colours to indicate ranges of DOI. Finally, the display of structured information elements can be ''automatically managed'' based on DOI; for instance, text corresponding to elements with low DOI can be automatically elided. The DOI value for each information element interacted with as part of a task can be derived from a stored history of interaction events recorded as the user works with the application. This approach requires a user to indicate the start of a task. The collection of all interaction events that take place during a single task is called a "task context". Task-focused interfaces have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing information overload and improving productivity. The Eclipse Mylyn project and NBTaskFocus for NetBeans IDE is an implementation of the Task-Focused Interface. Mylyn filters, sorts, highlights, folds, and manages tree expansion for numerous views within the Eclipse IDE based on the currently active task. NBTaskFocus filters project panels and manages automatic task context for NetBeans IDE.

References

External links

Eclipse Mylyn Project

NBTaskFocus project for NetBeans IDE
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210118073547/http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/53996/nbtaskfocus , date=2021-01-18 User interface techniques