Cai, C. J., Iqbal, S. T., &amp; Teevan, J. (2016). Chain Reactions: The Impact of Order on Microtask Chains. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858237 

Chain Reactions: The Impact of Order on Microtask Chains

Teevan, J., Iqbal, S. T., & Von Veh, C. (2016, May). Supporting Collaborative Writing with Microtasks. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2657-2668).

Supporting Collaborative Writing with Microtasks

Salehi, N., Teevan, J., Iqbal, S., Kamar, E., (2017) Communicating Context to the Crowd for Complex Writing Tasks. Stanford University, Microsoft Research. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998332

Communicating Context to the Crowd for Complex Writing Tasks 

Williams, A., Kaur, H., Iqbal, S., White, R., Teevan, J., Fourney, A., (2019) Mercury: Empowering Programmers’ Mobile Work Practices with Microproductivity. University of Waterloo, University of Michigan, Microsoft Research. UIST '19, October 20–23, 2019, New Orleans, LA, USA. DOI: 10.1145/3332165.3347932

Mercury: Empowering Programmers’ Mobile Work Practices with Microproductivity

 Kappen, D., Johannsmeier, J., Nacke, L.,(2013) Deconstructing ‘Gamified’ Task-Management Applications. Stratford, Ontario, Canada, October 2-4, 2013. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583034

 Deconstructing ‘Gamified’ Task-Management Applications 

Teevan, J., (2016) The future of Microtasks. Microsoft Research Team. XRDS. WINTER 2016. VOL .23.  NO.2  DOI: 10.1145/3019600

The future of Microproductivity

- The Microsoft Research Team is exploring microproductivity in the context of writing. They chose writing as a model productivity task because it requires fundamental, but varied, skills such as reading, analysis, reasoning, and communication. As such, writing tools provide a valuable lens through which to understand and explore a range of problems related to information work. Writing is also a “fun” domain to study because the task is not obviously decomposable. 
- To understand how to successfully transform the creation of written text into lightweight microtasks, they have brought together experts in the domains of attention management, crowdsourcing, natural language processing, machine learning, personal information management, computer-supported cooperative work, and artificial intelligence. 


Microsoft's Microproductivity Research Team (Focus and interest) 

Cheng, J., Teevan, J., Iqbal, S. T., & Bernstein, M. S. (2015). Break it down: A comparison of macro-and microtasks. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 4061-4064).

Break It Down: A Comparison of Macro- and Microtasks

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/microtasks-and-microproductivity/

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

The act of decomposing tasks into smaller microtasks that leverage micromoments (specific, strategic moments that occur during a person's day).

Microproductivity

Microsoft's Microproductivity Research Team Overview

Mobile devices offer people the opportunity to get useful tasks done during time previously thought to be unusable. Because cell phones have small screens, they’re useful for short, simple tasks. The researchers in this study designed a special app, Play Write, whose purpose is to make complex editing tasks more fragmented and achievable while working on mobile devices. Results suggested that the app made participants feel more productive and less stressed, and they completed more edits on a document using the app.

Multitasking with Play Write, a mobile microproductivity writing tool

 In this paper, authors explore how software might help programmers make productive use of their time while away from their workspace. It explores how to facilitate programmers’ mobile work practices and cross-device work as subjects express interest in work more grounded in their existing code tasks. The paper introduces Mercury, a mobile programming tool that auto-generates microtasks based on programmers’ existing code. 

Mercury: Empowering Programmers’ Mobile Work Practices with Microproductivity 

This article explores the usefulness of gamification on task-management applications in terms of motivation, engagement and productivity. 

Small jobs that requires a low level of skill and takes minimal time to complete. Microtasking is the process of splitting up a large job (macro-task) into smaller jobs.

Microtasks/ Microtasking

A small gap in time that occurs between other segments of occupied time during which microtasks can be completed

Micromoment

This article was written by the leader of the Microsoft Research team detailing concepts and developments needed to understand the domain of Microproductivity. It also presented the conclusions of a short study conducted by the team (not explained in detailed), and its practical implications. 

The future of Microproductivity 

- A Brief Perspective on Microtask Crowdsourcing Workflows for Interface Design
- Skill Development Framework for Micro-Tasking


Further Literature

The completion and aggregation of microtasks. Involves motivating people to complete microtasks, designing where and when to embed microtasks, and managing attention.

Task Completion Definiton

The sourcing of tasks and microtasks to an actor to complete. For example, a microtask could be completed by the task owner, peers, the crowd, or automation.

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