Focus Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information Workers

Koustuv Saha; Shamsi T. Iqbal

doi:10.1145/3544549.3585688

Focus Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information Workers

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

Abstract

Having little time for focused work is a major challenge in information work. While research has explored computing-assisted user-facing solutions for protecting time for focused work, there is limited empirical evidence about the effectiveness of these features on wellbeing and work engagement. Towards this problem, we study the effects of automatically scheduling time for focused work on people's work calendars using the Focus Time feature on Outlook calendars. We conducted an experimental study over six weeks with 15 Treatment and 10 Control participants who responded to survey questions on wellbeing and work engagement throughout the study. We find that the Treatment participants showed higher wellbeing, including increased excitement, relaxation, and satisfaction, and decreased anger, frustration, tiredness, and stress. We study the needs, benefits, and challenges of scheduling focus time, and discuss the importance and design recommendations for enabling mechanisms and tools supporting focused work.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	CHI 2023 - Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450394222
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585688
State	Published - Apr 19 2023
Externally published	Yes
Event	2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023 - Hamburg, Germany Duration: Apr 23 2023 → Apr 28 2023

Publication series

Name	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference	2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023
Country/Territory	Germany
City	Hamburg
Period	4/23/23 → 4/28/23

Keywords

experimental study
focus work
time protection
wellbeing
work engagement workplace

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
Software

Online availability

10.1145/3544549.3585688

Library availability

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Focus Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information Workers. / Saha, Koustuv; Iqbal, Shamsi T.
CHI 2023 - Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, 2023. 140 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings).

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

Saha, K & Iqbal, ST 2023, Focus Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information Workers. in CHI 2023 - Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems., 140, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, Association for Computing Machinery, 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023, Hamburg, Germany, 4/23/23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585688

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Focus Time for Wellbeing and Work Engagement of Information Workers

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Online availability

Library availability

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