Victor Kaptelinin: User-Monitoring Environments for Action (UMEA)

The seminar will deal with the problem of providing support for higher-level user actions. Analysis of current approaches, such as personal information management systems, dedicated project spaces, and non-hierarchical architectures of virtual work environments reveals limitations associated with each of them. The UMEA (User-Monitoring Environments for Actions) approach, based on converting project-specific interaction histories into project contexts, is proposed as a way to minimize overhead, integrate self-management with communication and management of tools and materials, and capitalize upon actual work practices of users. At the seminar main ideas underlying the UMEA approach will be presented and potential directions of its future development will be discussed.