Shamsi T. Iqbal

Microsoft · Natural Interaction Research Group

Email continues to serve as a central medium for managing collaborations. While unstructured email messaging is lightweight and conducive to coordination, it is easy to overlook commitments and requests for collaborations that are embedded in the text of free-flowing communications. Twenty-one years ago, Bellotti et al. proposed TaskMaster with the...

Task management tools allow people to record, track, and manage task-related information across their work and personal contexts. As work contexts have shifted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become important to understand how these tools are continuing or failing to support peoples’ work-related and personal needs. In this paper, we examine and...

We now turn to understanding the impact that COVID-19 had on the personal productivity and well-being of information workers as their work practices were impacted by remote work. This chapter overviews people's productivity, satisfaction, and work patterns, and shows that the challenges and benefits of remote work are closely linked. Looking forwar...

Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting multitasking is closely linked to people's productivity and wellbeing. However, we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and its potential impact. In this paper, we pr...

This paper investigates how to sketch NLP-powered user experiences. Sketching is a cornerstone of design innovation. When sketching designers rapidly experiment with a number of abstract ideas using simple, tangible instruments such as drawings and paper prototypes. Sketching NLP-powered experiences, however, presents unique challenges. It can be h...

Microtasks enable people with limited time and context to contribute to a larger task. In this paper we explore casual microtasking, where microtasks are embedded into other primary activities so that they are available to be completed when convenient. We present a casual microtasking experience that inserts writing microtasks from an existing micr...

In-car intelligent assistants offer the opportunity to help drivers productively use previously unclaimed time during their commute. However, engaging in secondary tasks can reduce attention on driving and thus may affect road safety. Any interface used while driving, even if speech-based, cannot consider non-driving tasks in isolation of driving--...

While having a step-by-step breakdown for a task-an action plan-helps people complete tasks, prior work has shown that people prefer not to make action plans for their own tasks. Getting planning support from others could be beneficial, but it is limited by how much domain knowledge people have about the task and how available they are. Our goal is...

Mobile devices offer people the opportunity to get useful tasks done during time previously thought to be unusable. Because mobile devices have small screens and are often used in divided attention scenarios, people are limited to using them for short, simple tasks; complex tasks like editing a document present significant challenges in this enviro...

Information workers are experiencing ever-increasing online distractions in the workplace, and software to block distractions is becoming more popular. We conducted an exploratory field study with 32 information workers in their workplace using software to block online distractions for one week. We discovered that with online distractions blocked,...

Research has shown that productivity is mediated by an individual's ability to detach from their work at the end of the day and reattach with it when they return the next day. In this paper we explore the extent to which structured dialogues, focused on individuals' work-related tasks or emotions, can help them with the detachment and reattachment...

It can be hard for authors to know if what they write will be clear to their readers. While collaborators can provide expert feedback, their liMassachusetts Institute of Technologyed time and attention makes it costly for authors to continuously solicit detailed input from them. Via a study with ten graduate student authors, we find a clear need fo...

In HCI research, attention has focused on understanding external influences on workplace multitasking. We explore instead how multitasking might be influenced by individual factors: personality, stress, and sleep. Forty information workers' online activity was tracked over two work weeks. The median duration of online screen focus was 40 seconds. T...

This paper presents the MicroWriter, a system that decomposes the task of writing into three types of microtasks to produce a single report: 1) generating ideas, 2) labeling ideas to organize them, and 3) writing paragraphs given a few related ideas. Because each microtask can be completed individually with limited awareness of what has been alread...

While email provides numerous benefits in the workplace, it is unclear how patterns of email use might affect key workplace indicators of productivity and stress. We investigate how three email use patterns: duration, interruption habit, and batching, relate to perceived workplace productivity and stress. We tracked email usage with computer loggin...

Microtasks are small units of work designed to be completed individually, eventually contributing to a larger goal. Although microtasks can be performed in isolation, in practice people often complete a chain of microtasks within a single session. Through a series of crowd-based studies, we look at how various microtasks can be chained together to...

It is difficult to accomplish meaningful goals with limited time and attentional resources. However, recent research has shown that concrete plans with actionable steps allow people to complete tasks better and faster. With advances in techniques that can decompose larger tasks into smaller units, we envision that a transformation from larger tasks...

Positive wellbeing in the workplace is tied to better health. However, lack of wellbeing in the workplace is a serious problem in the U.S, is rising continually, and can lead to poor health conditions. In this study we investigate factors that might be associated with workplace wellbeing. We report on an in situ study in the workplace of 40 informa...

Striking up a good conversation with new acquaintances is often difficult. In this paper we introduce a system that uses a ranking recommendation algorithm to generate real-time personalized topic suggestions during a conversation. The system then delivers the suggestions via Google Glass. We conducted a study with 38 pairs of strangers, who receiv...

A common assumption in studies of interruptions is that one is focused in an activity and then distracted by other stimuli. We take the reverse perspective and examine whether one might first be in an attentional state that makes one susceptible to communications typically associated with distraction. We explore the confluence of multitasking and w...

Among other things, one or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed for mediating tasks in real-time for safety-related concerns. A nature for a safety-related primary task, such as contextual elements of the task, is determined; and a nature of a secondary task that draws attention away from the primary task is also determined. A risk factor f...

In an experiment using a driving simulator we investigated whether sharing information of a driver's context with a remote caller via continuous audio cues can make callers more aware of the driving situation. Increased awareness could potentially help in making the conversation less distracting. Prior research has shown that although sharing conte...

While distractions using digital media have received attention in HCI, understanding engagement in workplace activities has been little explored. We logged digital activity and continually probed perspectives of 32 information workers for five days in situ to understand how attentional states change with context. We present a framework of how engag...

What makes people feel happy, engaged and challenged at work? We conducted an in situ study of Facebook and face-to-face interactions examining how they influence people's mood in the workplace. Thirty-two participants in an organization were each observed for five days in their natural work environment using automated data capture and experience s...

A task disruption and recovery system and methods are described that detects shifts away from ongoing tasks, whether by self-interruption or by disruptive events from within or outside a computing system, based on signals detected. Among other functions, the system works to enhance the efficient recovery of suspended tasks or problem-solving sessio...

We contrast the Chameleon Lens, which uses 3D movement of a mobile device held in the nonpreferred hand to support panning and zooming, with the Pinch-Flick-Drag metaphor of directly manipulating the view using multi-touch gestures. Lens-like approaches have significant potential because they can support navigation-selection, navigation-annotation,...

With proliferation of mobile devices that provide ubiqui-tous access to information, the question arises of how dis-tracting processing information in social settings can be, especially during face-to-face conversations. However, rel-evant information presented at opportune moments may help enhance conversation quality. In this paper, we study how...

Despite the common use of mobile computing devices to communicate and access information, the effects of peripheral computing tasks on people's attention is not well understood. Studies that have identified consequences of multitasking in diverse domains have largely focused on influences on productivity. We have yet to understand perceptions and p...

Conversing on cell phones while driving is a risky, yet commonplace activity. State legislatures in the U.S. have enacted rules that limit hand-held phone conversations while driving but that allow for hands-free conversations. However, studies have demonstrated that the cognitive load of conversation is a significant source of distraction that inc...

A notification represents the proactive delivery of information to a user and reduces the need to visually scan or repeatedly check an external information source. At the same time, notifications often interrupt user tasks at inopportune moments, decreasing productivity and increasing frustration. Controlled studies have shown that linking notifica...

Although there has been significant research into gender regarding educational and workplace practices, there has been little investigation of gender differences pertaining to problem solving with programming tools and environments. As a result, there is little evidence as to what role gender plays in programming tools---and what little evidence th...

The impact of interruptions on workflow and productivity has been extensively studied in the PC domain, but while fragmented user attention is recognized as an inherent aspect of mobile phone usage, little formal evidence exists of its effect on mobile productivity. Using a survey and a screenshot-based diary study we investigated the types of barr...

Conversing on cell phones while driving an automobile is a common practice. We examine the interference of the cognitive load of conversational dialog with driving tasks, with the goal of identifying better and worse times for conversations during driving. We present results from a controlled study involving 18 users using a driving simulator. The...

Desktop notifications are designed to provide awareness of information while a user is attending to a primary task. Unfortunately the awareness can come with the price of disruption to the focal task. We review results of a field study on the use and perceived value of email notifications in the workplace. We recorded users' interactions with softw...

We present a novel system for notification management and report results from two studies testing its performance and impact. The system uses statistical models to realize defer-to-breakpoint policies for managing notifications. The first study tested how well the models detect three types of breakpoints within novel task sequences. Results show th...

Notifications can have reduced interruption cost if delivered at moments of lower mental workload during task execution. Cognitive theorists have speculated that these moments occur at subtask boundaries. In this article, we empirically test this speculation by examining how workload changes during execution of goal-directed tasks, focusing on regi...

Interruptions in the workplace are becoming increasingly prevalent due to the proliferation of proactive behavior within communication applications and collaborative practices. Interruptions caused by notifications from communication applications (email, instant messaging clients) or operating systems, phone calls and collocated individuals often c...

Pupillary response is a valid indicator of mental workload and is being increasingly leveraged to identify lower cost moments for interruption, evaluate complex interfaces, and develop further understanding of psychological processes. Existing tools are not sufficient for analyzing this type of data, as it typically needs to be analyzed in relation...

We report on a field study of the multitasking beha vior of computer users focused on the suspension and resumption of tasks. Data was collected with a tool that logge d users' interactions with software applications and their a ssociated windows, as well as incoming instant messaging and email alerts. We describe methods, summarize results, and di...

The ability to detect and differentiate breakpoints during task execution is critical for enabling defer-to-breakpoint policies within interruption management. In this work, we examine the feasibility of building statistical models that can detect and differentiate three granularities (types) of perceptually meaningful breakpoints during task execu...

A challenge in building interruption reasoning systems is to compute an accurate cost of interruption (COI). Prior work has used non task-specific cues to predict COI, but ignore characteristics related to the /structure/ of a task. This work investigates how well characteristics of task structure can predict COI, as objectively measured by resumpt...

To contribute to systems that reason about human attention, our work empirically demonstrates how a user's mental workload changes during task execution. We conducted a study where users performed interactive, hierarchical tasks while mental workload was measured through the use of pupil size. Results show that (i) different types of subtasks impos...

This work investigates the use of workload-aligned task models for predicting opportune moments for interruption. From models for several tasks, we selected boundaries with the lowest (Best) and highest (Worst) mental workload. We compared effects of interrupting primary tasks at these and Random moments on resumption lag, annoyance, and social att...

Interrupting users engaged in tasks typically has negative effects on their task completion time, error rate, and affective state. Empirical research has shown that these negative effects can be mitigated by deferring interruptions until more opportune moments in a user's task sequence. However, existing systems that reason about when to interrupt...

Accurate assessment of a user's mental workload will be critical for developing systems that manage user attention (interruptions) in the user interface. Empirical evidence suggests that an interruption is much less disruptive when it occurs during a period of lower mental workload. To provide a measure of mental workload for interactive tasks, we...

To contribute to systems that reason about human attention, our work empirically demonstrates how a user's mental workload changes during task execution. We conducted a study where users performed an interactive hierarchical task and measured mental workload through the use of pupil size. Results show that (i) different types of subtasks impose dif...

Users of today's desktop interface often suffer from interruption overload. Our research seeks to develop an attention manager that mitigates the disruptive effects of interruptions by identifying moments of low mental workload in a user's task sequence. To develop such a system, however, we need effective mechanisms to identify user tasks in real-...

We present results from a field study investigating the influence of conversations on the multitasking behavior of computer users. We report on several findings, including the timing of the resumption of tasks following conversational interruptions and on the nature and rate of computing activities that are performed concurrently with conversation.

Proactive systems executing in multitasking environments are increasingly interrupting user tasks. To mitigate the negative impact of ill-timed interruptions on task perform-ance and users' affective state, researchers are exploring systems that reason about when to interrupt. In this paper I present my research on MeWS-IT -a system that leverages...

We report on a field study of the multitasking behavior of computer users focused on the suspension and resumption of tasks. Data was collected with a tool that logged users'interactions with software applications and their associated windows, as well as incoming instant messaging and email alerts. We describe methods, summarize results, and discus...

Task interruption often has a significant negative impact on a user's productivity and affective state. Cognitive theorists have argued that interrupting the execution of primary tasks at moments of lower mental workload would mitigate effects of interruption, yet knowing just where these moments occur remains elusive. In this article, we present e...

The ability to detect and differentiate breakpoints during task execution is critical for enabling defer-to-breakpoint policies within interruption management. In this work, we examine the feasibility of building models that are capable of detecting and differentiating three granularities (types) of perceptually meaningful breakpoints, without spec...

This work reports results from two studies investigating intelligent notification scheduling. The first study tested the performance of composite statistical models for detecting and differentiating three granularities (types) of breakpoints within novel task sequences. Results showed that the models detect breakpoints reasonably well, but do not p...

Printout. Thesis (M.S.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37)