Paper ID
3258
Description
Technological developments in information technology enabled the ubiquitous emergence of instant messages and push notifications in private and work lives. Moreover, open plan office designs and organizational shifts such as agile methodologies further tighten interactions among employees. These new opportunities, however, also pose a double-edge sword in that large amounts of unwanted information may repeatedly draw attention from the primary task, thus distracting and preventing knowledge workers from working effectively. In this paper, we present a design science research project on how to design a focus assistant that shields its users against digital and physical distractions to sustain their focus. Drawing on literature on attention, focus and distraction, we developed seven design principles and derived first potential features for a prototype. By developing the basis to build an artifact, we intend to contribute to the constituent IS community on assisting workers in technology-enabled work arrangements.
Recommended Citation
Werner, Dominick; Hovestadt, Christian; Adam, Martin; and Schulze, Laura, "Shielding Focus Against Distractions: Designing Focus Assistants for Knowledge Workers" (2019). ICIS 2019 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2019/future_of_work/future_work/16
Shielding Focus Against Distractions: Designing Focus Assistants for Knowledge Workers
Technological developments in information technology enabled the ubiquitous emergence of instant messages and push notifications in private and work lives. Moreover, open plan office designs and organizational shifts such as agile methodologies further tighten interactions among employees. These new opportunities, however, also pose a double-edge sword in that large amounts of unwanted information may repeatedly draw attention from the primary task, thus distracting and preventing knowledge workers from working effectively. In this paper, we present a design science research project on how to design a focus assistant that shields its users against digital and physical distractions to sustain their focus. Drawing on literature on attention, focus and distraction, we developed seven design principles and derived first potential features for a prototype. By developing the basis to build an artifact, we intend to contribute to the constituent IS community on assisting workers in technology-enabled work arrangements.