Towards a composite modelling approach for multitasking

Abstract

Much information and knowledge work (with and without information technology) can be characterised as multitasking and interrupt driven. A whole host of characterisations and buzzwords imply an increase in the number of roles, tasks/activities, IT artefacts, interruptions and exceptions that people have to deal with. This provides a challenge for Task Analysis approaches as they have historically focussed around single tasks and users.A preliminary version of a composite modelling approach (the Composite Multitasking Model) is presented that draws from approaches that model task, events, interruptions, exceptions and the temporal aspects of tasks. As well consideration of how information about multiple tasks is elicited, we apply the approach to the modelling of data from our own studies.