[Air-l] multitasking on computers

Sun Oct 15 07:56:32 PDT 2006

Richard, 
Thanks. Both this and your next post add much to my understanding of
multi-tasking. 

I particularly like the idea of meta-schemas and how multiple "tasks" can be
additive instead of distracting. I happen to have a three monitor computer
system and find the ability to have multiple screens which often have
multiple windows available at the same time invaluable in both research and
web programming. (Feel free to give my email address charlie at balch.org to
your student researching this area). For instance, I often have my code
displayed on one screen, a database table or two on another screen, and the
results of the code on the third screen. 

For research, I usually just use two screens with a downloaded article on
one screen and my writing on a second screen. Occasionally I'll have
something on a spreadsheet on the third screen. 

I believe that multi-monitor systems will become much more common.

I don't IM at all with my students but I did find your comment about Email
interesting. When I'm not using the third computer screen for something
else, it shows my Email. When I measure my productivity by how much I type
and read, Email is a major distracter. On the other hand, I routinely listen
to music and/or radio talk shows and that does not reduce my productivity
unless I'm distracted enough to take my hands away from the keyboard to call
in and get a prize for a trivia question. 

I must also admit that Email such as yours provides me with information that
any person with a love of knowledge would enjoy. Perhaps I should be
completing my dissertation or talking to my wife but this topic is much fun
and thus distracting. Unfortunately, my research topic is on the creation of
a research based Internet survey system (http://birat.net) and my wife
refuses to talk about research anymore so I suppose this Email was
distracting instead of additive to my meta-schema. Or did I just slip
something in that makes the time I took away from my wife and dissertation
additive? 

I think we need to think more about what successful completion of tasks and
efficiency mean. For instance, who has been more productive when a person
has completed three tasks to 75% of optimal accomplishment in the time that
another person completed a single task to 100% of optimum accomplishment? Of
course the nature of the tasks matter. I would not want to undergo surgery
when my doctor is *distracted.* On the other hand, if my doctor said that
she worked better with music, I'd say crank it up.

Grins and I'm back to my dissertation after a chat with my wife,
Charlie
http://charlie.balch.org 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of richard hall
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 4:47 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] multitasking

In fact, I have a student doing a thesis on a study of the usability of quad
panel displays, which has many multi-tasking aspects.

First there is definitely a literature in experimental psychology on
multi-tasking, which pretty strong suggests it's bad - the sum of
performance on tasks performed in sequence is better than performance on the
tasks performed simultaneously (which is operationalized as going back and
forth between the two). However, like much of basic research in psychology,
it's strong in controls, but not real strong in ecological validity. One of
the classic studies, involved tasks involving identification of basic
shapes. (rebenstein et al., Journal of Experimental Psych) and there are a
number of others. Basically the idea is that you develop a schema/framework
that is guiding you in one task and it takes additional resources every time
you move to another task and then apply another schema -

Besides the fact that this is not a real task anyone would ever do when
multi-tasking, differences with the applications of multi-tasking as we are
discussing them are that the students may well have developed sort of meta
schemas (my term) from lots of practice so that all the multi-tasks together
are sort of one big task.

More importantly, in my student's research he had participants complete a
web design task using dreamweaver, while using video screen-capture
tutorials and he defined multi-tasking as degree of switching among windows
(not necessarily monitors) and found that multi-tasking actually helped
performance. Of course, in his case the multi-tasks were sort of like
sub-tasks of one big task. So, his interpretation is that multi-tasking can
actually be effective, when the multiple tasks help one another - all are
aiming at one goal - not indpendent tasks. For the record, we publish all
the thesis on line and we'll do that after he defends.

More anecdotally, I will say, in my experience, it's not very fun to lecture
or carry on a meeting or a conversation when your "audience" is doing other
stuff, though I'm not a big fan of lecture much anymore anyway.

Finally, my students are always trying to get me to IM and I find it
annoying in the same way the phone is annoying and, for the same reason that
I really like email. I like responding to stuff when I have a break in my
tasks, and don't like the invasive nature of these tools that  put the
burden on the responder to respond, when it seems to me that the burden
should be on the one who initiates the conversation to wait until the
responder wants to respond (if that makes sense).

... Richard

-- 
Richard H. Hall    
http://richardhhall.org

On 10/14/06 12:12 PM, "Barry Wellman" <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

> As this is the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS, I wonder if anyone 
> has done any Research on multitasking -- to address the interesting 
> conjectures that a bunch of people have.
> 
> Alas, the only study I know of is our own (actually mostly Anabel's) 
> observations, interviews and surveys of a high-tech orgnization:
> 
> Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work:
> Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 
> in The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the 
> Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York:
> Oxford University Press, 2006.
> 
> Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "From the Computerization 
> Movement to
> Computerization: A Case Study of a Community of Practice." Forthcoming 
> in Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes 
> to Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Ken Kraemer and Margaret Elliott. 
> Medford,
> NJ: Information Today, 2007.
> 
>  Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
> 
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _____________________________________________________________________
> 
> 
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