Papers for

productivity tool designers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

People often change or abandon digital plans made on smartphones

How do people plan digitally: An in-the-wild investigation of task planning through a smartphone app

Abstract: Daily planning supports goal attainment and productivity, and people increasingly delegate it to digital tools. Plans are postponed, revised, and left unresolved rather than executed as intended. Understanding these changes requires following tasks from creation through later updates and recorded outcomes. We report an in-the-wild study of task planning using time-stamped logs of 24,265 tasks from 957 users of a widely used daily planner app, observed over six weeks alongside self-reported surveys. Following each task across its lifecycle, only 26.4% moved directly from creation to completion and 32.0% were abandoned; all-day and longer tasks were abandoned disproportionately, and 77.6% of timed tasks were marked complete later than intended. Latent profile analysis of 909 users indicated High Engagement (11.1%), Low Engagement (19.7%), and Passive (69.2%) profiles; active days on app distinguished the profiles and were associated with post-survey completion. These findings support evaluating planning tools across the task lifecycle.

Mon 14 SeptHuman-Computer InteractionComputers and Society

The gist

People use smartphone apps to plan daily tasks, but most plans don't go exactly as planned. The authors studied nearly 25,000 tasks from almost 1,000 users over six weeks and found only about a quarter of tasks were done as originally created. Many tasks were abandoned or completed late, especially longer or all-day tasks. Different users showed patterns of engagement with the app, which helps understand how planning tools can better support task completion over time.

Open → 2609.15904v1