Open AccessProviding support for multi‐session web tasks
Author(s) -
MacKay Bonnie,
Watters Carolyn
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2009.1450460234
Subject(s) - session (web analytics) , computer science , field (mathematics) , web application , world wide web , multimedia , human–computer interaction , task (project management) , web browser , the internet , engineering , mathematics , systems engineering , pure mathematics
In two previous studies, we explored how users perform multi‐session web tasks (those tasks that require more than one web session to complete). Using the results of these studies, we proposed three guidelines to help developers design browser support for these types of tasks. In this paper, we describe three prototypes that we designed and developed using these guidelines and the results of a preliminary evaluation of the prototypes in the field. We found that while participants found the simplest prototype to be the easiest to use, it was the other two prototypes with additional functionality that were deemed more useful by participants. In addition, participants preferred the prototypes with additional functionality that helped manage their tasks between sessions.