Study of metawork Study of Meta-work Tools and Strategies of 7 Information Workers

Study of metawork Study of Meta-work Tools and Strategies

I. Goals

The goals of the preliminary work are to gain qualitative insight into how information workers practice metawork, and to determine whether people might be better-supported with software which facillitates metawork and interruptions. Thus, the preliminary work should investigate, and demonstrate, the need and impact of the core goals of the project.

II. Methodology

Seven information workers, ages 20-38 (5 male, 2 female), were interviewed to determine which methods they use to "stay organized". An initial list of metawork strategies was established from two pilot interviews, and then a final list was compiled. Participants then responded to a series of 17 questions designed to gain insight into their metawork strategies and process. In addition, verbal interviews were conducted to get additional open-ended feedback.

III. Final Results

A histogram of methods people use to "stay organized" in terms of tracking things they need to do (TODOs), appointments and meetings, etc. is shown in the figure below.

In addition to these methods, participants also used a number of other methods, including:

• iCal
• Notes written in xterms
• "Inbox zero" method of email organization
• iGoogle Notepad (for tasks)
• Tag emails as "TODO", "Important", etc.
• Things (Organizer Software)
• Physical items placed to "remind me of things"
• Sometimes arranging windows on desk
• Keeping browser tabs open
• Bookmarking web pages
• Keep programs/files open scrolled to certain locations sometimes with things selected

In addition, three participants said that when interrupted they "rarely" or "very rarely" were able to resume the task they were working on prior to the interruption. Three of the participants said that they would not actively recommend their metawork strategies for other people, and two said that staying organized was "difficult".

Four participants were neutral to the idea of new tools to help them stay organized and three said that they would like to have such a tool/tools.

IV. Discussion

These results qunatiatively support our hypothesis that there is no clearly dominant set of metawork strategies employed by information workers. This highly fragemented landscape is surprising, even though most information workers work in a similar environment - at a desk, on the phone, in meetings - and with the same types of tools - computers, pens, paper, etc. We believe that this suggests that there are complex tradeoffs between these methods and that no single method is sufficient. We therefore believe that users will be better supported with a new set of software-based metawork tools.