Less is More: Exploring Support for Time Management Planning

Conference paper

John R. Lund, Jason Wiese
DIS '21, Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2021, pp. 392–405

DOI: 10.1145/3461778.3462133

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APA Click to copy
Lund, J. R., & Wiese, J. (2021). Less is More: Exploring Support for Time Management Planning. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (pp. 392–405). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462133

Chicago/Turabian Click to copy
Lund, John R., and Jason Wiese. “Less Is More: Exploring Support for Time Management Planning.” In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021, 392–405. DIS '21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021.

MLA Click to copy
Lund, John R., and Jason Wiese. “Less Is More: Exploring Support for Time Management Planning.” Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021, Association for Computing Machinery, 2021, pp. 392–405, doi:10.1145/3461778.3462133.

BibTeX Click to copy

@inproceedings{lund2021a,
  title = {Less is More: Exploring Support for Time Management Planning},
  year = {2021},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  pages = {392–405},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  series = {DIS '21},
  doi = {10.1145/3461778.3462133},
  author = {Lund, John R. and Wiese, Jason},
  booktitle = {Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021}
}

Time management planning (TMP) is a practice where people plan what they intend to accomplish and when in a given day. The literature indicates behaviors associated with TMP, but not how people specifically engage in them or how technology is involved. We examined TMP practices of 19 graduate students, noting their methods and how they engage with tools. Students utilized different combinations of TMP behaviors, both in comparison to each other and within their own experiences. We then asked them to plan following specific guidelines over five days. Participants implemented these guidelines in unique ways using unstructured tools (paper, notes applications). Together, these findings suggest that to be useful, TMP software must not impose a specific structure. We demonstrate opportunities to incorporate these findings through the design of a flexible mobile application based on notes applications to facilitate planning while encouraging, but not requiring, the use of TMP behaviors.