首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Science of Interruptions In 2000, Gloria Mark was hired as a professor at the University of California. She would arrive
The Science of Interruptions In 2000, Gloria Mark was hired as a professor at the University of California. She would arrive
admin
2012-10-11
54
问题
The Science of Interruptions
In 2000, Gloria Mark was hired as a professor at the University of California. She would arrive at her desk in the morning, full of energy and ready to tackle her to-do list. No sooner had she started one task than a colleague would e-mail her with an urgent request; when she went to work on that, the phone would ring. At the end of the day, Mark had accomplished a fraction of what she set out to do.
Lots of people complain that office multitasking drives them nuts. But Mark studies how high-tech devices affect our behavior, so she was able to do more than complain, she set out to measure how nuts we’ve all become. She watched cubicle (办公室隔间) dwellers as they surfed the chaos of modern office life and found each employee spent only ten-and-a-half minutes on any given project before being interrupted. Each short project was itself fragmented into three- minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages or working on a sheet.
Mark’s study also revealed that interruptions are often crucial to office work. The high-tech workers admitted that many of their daily distractions were essential to their jobs. When someone forwards you an urgent e-mail message, it’s often something you really do need to see; if a mobile phone call breaks through, it might be the call that saves your hide.
For some computer engineers and academics, this realization has begun raise an attractive possibility: perhaps we can find an ideal middle ground. If high-tech work distractions are inevitable, maybe we can re-engineer them so we receive all of their benefits but few of their downsides.
The Birth of Multitasking
The science of interruptions began more than 100 years ago with the emergence of telegraph operators--the first high-stress, time-sensitive information-technology jobs. Psychologists discovered that if someone spoke to a telegraph operator while he was keying a message, the operator was more likely to make errors. Later, psychologists determined that whenever workers needed to focus on a job that required the monitoring of data, presentation was all important. Using this knowledge, cockpits (驾驶舱) for fighter pilots were carefully designed so that each dial and meter could be read with just a glance.
Still, such issues seemed remote from the lives of everyday workers. Then, in the 1990s, computers began to experience a rapid increase in speed and power. "Multitasking" was born; instead of simply working on one program for hours at a time, a computer user works on several simultaneously. Office workers now stare at computer screens of overwhelming complexity, as they juggle (操纵) messages, text documents, PowerPoint presentations and Web browsers. In the modern office we are all fighter pilots.
Effect of Multitasking: Computer-affected Behavior
Information is no longer a scarce resource attention is. 20 years ago, an office worker had two types of communication technology: a phone, which required an instant answer, and postal mail, which took days. Now people have dozens of possibilities between these two poles.
The result is something like "continuous partial attention", which makes us so busy keeping an eye on everything that we never fully focus on anything. This can actually be a positive feeling, inasmuch as the constant email dinging makes us feel needed and desired. But what happens when you take that to the extreme? You get overwhelmed. Sanity lies in danger.
In 1997, Microsoft recruited Mary Czerwinski, who once worked in NASA’s Human- computer Interaction Lab, to conduct basic research to find out how computer affect human behavior. She took 39 office workers and installed software on their computers that would record every mouse click. She discovered that computer users were as restless as hummingbird. On average, they juggled eight windows at the same time. More astonishing, they would spend barely 20 seconds looking at one window before flipping to another.
Why constant shifting? In part it was because of the way computers are laid out. A computer offers very little visual real estate. A Microsoft Word document can cover almost an entire screen. Once you begin multitasking, a computer desktop quickly becomes buried in windows. When someone is interrupted, it takes just over 23 minutes to cycle back to the original task. Once their work becomes buried beneath a screenful of interruptions, office workers appear to forget what tasks they were originally pursuing. The central danger of interruptions is not the interruption at all, but the confusion they bring to our short-term memory.
Ways to Cope with Interruptions
When Mark and Czerwinski, working separately, looked at the desks of the people they were studying, they each noticed the same thing: Post-it notes. Workers would write brief reminders of the task they .were supposed to be working on ("Test DA’s PC, Waiting for AL... "). Then they would place them directly in their fields of vision, often in a circle around the edge of their computer screens.
These piecemeal efforts at coping pointed to ways that our high-tech tools could be engineered to be less distracting. Czerwinski also noticed many Microsoft people attached three monitors to their computers. They placed their applications on different screens--the email on the right side, a Web browser on the right and their main work project in the middle--so that each application was read at a glance. When the ding on their email program went off, they just peek to the left to see the message.
The workers said this arrangement made them feel calmer. But did more screen area actually help with cognition? To find out, Czerwinski had 1,5 volunteers sit in front of a regular size 38cm monitor and complete a variety of tasks designed to challenge their concentration--a Web search, some cutting and pasting, and memorizing phone numbers. Then the volunteers repeated the tasks using a computer with a massive 105em screen.
On the bigger screen, some people completed the tasks as much as 44% more quickly. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single change to a computer system so significantly improve a user’s productivity. The clearer your screen, the calmer your mind.
Looking for Better Interruptions
Mark compared the way people work when sitting in cubicles with how they work when they’re at different locations and interact online. She discovered people working in cubicles suffer more interruptions, but they have better interruptions because their co-workers have a social sense of what they’re doing. When you work next to others, they sense whether you’re deeply immersed or relatively free to talk and interrupt you accordingly.
Why don’t computers work this way? Instead of alerting us to email messages the instant they arrive, our machines could deliver them at optimum moments, When our brains are relaxed. Eric Horvitz at Microsoft is trying to do precisely that. He has been building automated reasoning systems equipped with artificial intelligence that observes a computer user’s behavior and tries to predict the moment the user will be mentally free and ready to be interrupted.
Czerwinski found that no other change to a computer system could more significantly improve a user’s productivity than ______.
选项
答案
a bigger, clearer screen/On the bigger screen
解析
参见"Ways to Cope with Interruptions"小节部分第4段: On the bigger screen, some people completed the tasks as much as 44% more quickly... Czerwinski had never seen a single change to a computer system so significantly improve a user’s productivity. the clearer your screen, the calmer your mind.
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/OPb7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Wearrivedattheairportontime,______(不料却被告知我们的航班被取消了).
It’smyhonortobeheretonight.OurorganizationiscalledtheNoiseAbatementSocietythat【B1】______andtriestodea
A、Hehaslearnedalotfromhisownmistakes.B、Heisquiteexperiencedintrainingwilddogs.C、Hefindsrewardmoreeffective
Allemployeesare______(每年都享有三个星期的假期).
A、Thespeakerswillwatchthegametogether.B、Thewomanfeelsluckytohavegotaticket.C、Themanplayscenteronthebasketb
ThereportdealswithBritish’sindustrialproblem,______fromtechnologygapstolackofinvestment.
Hiseffectiveapproachhadwonhima______asatoughmanager.
Asfarastherankofpositionisconcerned,anassociateprofessoris________toaprofessor,thoughtheyarealmostequallyk
A、They’recousins.B、They’relabpartners.C、They’reclassmates.D、They’reroommates.C浏览选项可知,本题考查对话双方之间的关系。对话中女士和男士互相打招呼,接着二人谈到
A、Anairwoman.B、Ateacher.C、Alawyer.D、Asecretary.D细节辨认题。解答本题的关键是抓住问题中的firstjob。短文开头部分介绍了AmyJohnson的生平经历,从出生到后来成为一名先锋飞行员
随机试题
全葡萄膜炎可有以下哪些体征()
突然尖叫一声,即刻倒地,四肢痉挛性抽搐,口吐血红色泡沫,小便失禁,此时属于继发性癫痫三大主因是
安全检验、检测是指通过一定的(),对涉及安全生产的设施、设备、器材的质量、性能以及某种物质的含量、成分等具体的指标、参数所进行的验证、测量等。
安全生产监督管理的形式多种多样,按照监督时间逻辑可以分为事前、事中和事后三种。下列属于事前监督管理的是()。
监理单位承揽到监理业务后,应当由项目监理机构相继编写的监理工作文件是( )。
[背景资料]某施工单位承建两栋15层的框架结构工程。合同约定:(1)钢筋由建设单位供应;(2)工程质量保修按国务院279号令执行。开工前施工单位编制了单位工程施工组织设计,并通过审批。施工过程中,发生下列事件:事件一:建设单位按照施工单位提出的某批次
我国目前标准轨型有( )。
某项目初期投资100万元,第1、2、3、4年年末的净现金流量分别为30万元、40万元、50万元、50万元。则投资回收期为()年。
行政强制包括行政强制措施和行政强制执行,下列表述错误的是:
Aspirinisoneofthesafestandmosteffectivedrugsinventedbyman.Themostpopularmedicineintheworldtoday,itisanef
最新回复
(
0
)