Knowledge workers face challenges in focusing on their tasks every day. They are constantly interrupted by various sources making it difficult to focus. These interruptions come in many forms from internal temptation to visit dis- tracting sites, to external distractions like notifications or incoming messages. Previous studies have explored the impacts of specific features to address one or a few of the interruption sources, but never all of them together. We sought to create a productivity support tool to address all
of these challenges combined. Incorporating several exist- ing approaches, we developed a desktop application called ExMan, short for Expectation Management, that allows a user to dedicate time to focus on tasks, called focus sessions. We conducted a two week study with 10 participants comparing the fully featured ExMan application to a more simplified version, inspired by the Pomodoro Technique. We collected data from 251 focus sessions and found that participants broke their focus sessions for shorter periods of time with a full set of features compared to the baseline, but did not have a significant increase in productivity. Auto- responses were not heavily used by our participants but showed to be a popular idea in the interviews, if executed properly. Ultimately, building one productivity support tool to address all focus challenges would need to be highly customizable to address the many different working styles of knowledge workers.

Students: Taylor McCants, Lutharsanen Kunam, Dario Bugmann

Supervisors: André Meyer, Dr., Roy Rutishauser, and Thomas Fritz, Prof. Dr.

Date: Jun 2020 – Feb 2021