Task-Focused Interface

The task-focused interface for computer applications began as a research project in the Software Practices Lab at the University of British Columbia in 2004. In 2005, the first release of a task-focused interface occurred through the open-source Eclipse Mylyn (then Mylar) project, led by Tasktop Technologies Inc. CEO, Mik Kersten. The advantages of task-focused work were immediately apparent to many developers who rapidly adopted Mylyn. Today, Tasktop Technologies Inc. continues to lead the Eclipse Mylyn open source project with hundreds of thousands of users benefitting from the technology daily.
Technology
The primary goal of a task-focused interface is to scope the information shown in a computer application to just that relevant to the user's current task. Based on the user's interactions,
each uniquely identifiable element of information available to the user is assigned a degree-of-interest (DOI) ranking. The more frequently and recently a user has interacted with an element
of information, the higher the DOI for that element for that task.
The DOI rankings for the information elements can be used within a task-focused interface in four ways. Elements below a certain DOI threshold can be filtered to reduce the number of elements presented. Elements can be ranked according to their DOI; for instance, the elements of highest interest can be shown at the top of a list. The elements can be decorated with colours to indicate ranges of DOI. Finally, the display of structured information elements can be automatically managed based on DOI; for instance, text corresponding to elements with low DOI can be automatically elided.
The DOI value for each information element interacted with as part of a task can be derived from a stored history of interaction events recorded as the user works with the application. This approach requires a user to indicate the start of a task. The collection of all interaction events that take place during a single task is call a Task Context.
Task-focused interfaces have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing information overload and improving productivity.
The Eclipse Mylyn project is an implementation of the Task-Focused Interface. Mylyn filters, sorts, highlights, folds, and manages tree expansion for numerous views within the Eclipse IDE based on the currently active task.
Open Source Implementations
* Eclipse Mylyn, a reference implementation of a Task-Focused Interface
* Cubeon, a task-focused interface for the NetBeans development environment

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