Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks

Harmanpreet Kaur; Alex C. Williams; Anne Loomis Thompson; Walter S. Lasecki; Shamsi Iqbal; Jaime Teevan

doi:10.1145/3170427.3188640

Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks

Harmanpreet Kaur
, Alex C. Williams
, Anne Loomis Thompson
, Walter S. Lasecki
, Shamsi Iqbal
, Jaime Teevan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Having a step-by-step list of instructions for completing a task—a plan—enables people to make progress on challenging tasks, but making plans for tasks is a tedious job. Asking crowdworkers to make plans for others’ tasks only works for independent (context-free) tasks, and asking people who have context (e.g., friends or collaborators) has social costs and quality concerns. Our goal is to reduce the costs and improve quality of planning by people who have context in the context-rich domain of writing. We introduce a vocabulary (a finite set of functions pertaining to writing tasks) to aid the planning process. We develop a writing vocabulary by analyzing 264 comments, and compare plans created using this vocabulary to those created without any aid, in a study with 768 comments (N = 145). We show that using a vocabulary reduces the planning time and effort compared to unstructured planning, and opens the door for automation and task sharing for complex tasks.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Subtitle of host publication	Engage with CHI
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450356206, 9781450356213
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188640
State	Published - Apr 20 2018
Externally published	Yes
Event	2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2018 - Montreal, Canada Duration: Apr 21 2018 → Apr 26 2018

Publication series

Name	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Volume	2018-April

Other

Other	2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2018
Country/Territory	Canada
City	Montreal
Period	4/21/18 → 4/26/18

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Keywords

Action plans
Crowdsourcing
Task decomposition

Publisher link

10.1145/3170427.3188640

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Cite this

Kaur, H., Williams, A. C., Thompson, A. L., Lasecki, W. S., Iqbal, S., & Teevan, J. (2018). Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks. In CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Engage with CHI Article LBW026 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings; Vol. 2018-April). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188640

Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks. / Kaur, Harmanpreet; Williams, Alex C.; Thompson, Anne Loomis et al.
CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Engage with CHI. Association for Computing Machinery, 2018. LBW026 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings; Vol. 2018-April).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Kaur, H, Williams, AC, Thompson, AL, Lasecki, WS, Iqbal, S & Teevan, J 2018, Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks. in CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Engage with CHI., LBW026, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, vol. 2018-April, Association for Computing Machinery, 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2018, Montreal, Canada, 4/21/18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188640

Kaur H, Williams AC, Thompson AL, Lasecki WS, Iqbal S, Teevan J. Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks. In CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Engage with CHI. Association for Computing Machinery. 2018. LBW026. (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). doi: 10.1145/3170427.3188640

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title = "Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks",

abstract = "Having a step-by-step list of instructions for completing a task—a plan—enables people to make progress on challenging tasks, but making plans for tasks is a tedious job. Asking crowdworkers to make plans for others{\textquoteright} tasks only works for independent (context-free) tasks, and asking people who have context (e.g., friends or collaborators) has social costs and quality concerns. Our goal is to reduce the costs and improve quality of planning by people who have context in the context-rich domain of writing. We introduce a vocabulary (a finite set of functions pertaining to writing tasks) to aid the planning process. We develop a writing vocabulary by analyzing 264 comments, and compare plans created using this vocabulary to those created without any aid, in a study with 768 comments (N = 145). We show that using a vocabulary reduces the planning time and effort compared to unstructured planning, and opens the door for automation and task sharing for complex tasks.",

keywords = "Action plans, Crowdsourcing, Task decomposition",

author = "Harmanpreet Kaur and Williams, \{Alex C.\} and Thompson, \{Anne Loomis\} and Lasecki, \{Walter S.\} and Shamsi Iqbal and Jaime Teevan",

note = "Publisher Copyright: Copyright held by the owner/author(s).; 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2018 ; Conference date: 21-04-2018 Through 26-04-2018",

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AU - Thompson, Anne Loomis

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AU - Iqbal, Shamsi

AU - Teevan, Jaime

N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

PY - 2018/4/20

Y1 - 2018/4/20

N2 - Having a step-by-step list of instructions for completing a task—a plan—enables people to make progress on challenging tasks, but making plans for tasks is a tedious job. Asking crowdworkers to make plans for others’ tasks only works for independent (context-free) tasks, and asking people who have context (e.g., friends or collaborators) has social costs and quality concerns. Our goal is to reduce the costs and improve quality of planning by people who have context in the context-rich domain of writing. We introduce a vocabulary (a finite set of functions pertaining to writing tasks) to aid the planning process. We develop a writing vocabulary by analyzing 264 comments, and compare plans created using this vocabulary to those created without any aid, in a study with 768 comments (N = 145). We show that using a vocabulary reduces the planning time and effort compared to unstructured planning, and opens the door for automation and task sharing for complex tasks.

AB - Having a step-by-step list of instructions for completing a task—a plan—enables people to make progress on challenging tasks, but making plans for tasks is a tedious job. Asking crowdworkers to make plans for others’ tasks only works for independent (context-free) tasks, and asking people who have context (e.g., friends or collaborators) has social costs and quality concerns. Our goal is to reduce the costs and improve quality of planning by people who have context in the context-rich domain of writing. We introduce a vocabulary (a finite set of functions pertaining to writing tasks) to aid the planning process. We develop a writing vocabulary by analyzing 264 comments, and compare plans created using this vocabulary to those created without any aid, in a study with 768 comments (N = 145). We show that using a vocabulary reduces the planning time and effort compared to unstructured planning, and opens the door for automation and task sharing for complex tasks.

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ER -

Using vocabularies to collaboratively create better plans for writing tasks

Abstract

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

Publisher link

Find It

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