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

This paper examines the effect of multitasking on overall worker performance, as measured by processing time, throughput rate, and output quality using micro-level operational data from the field. Specifically, it studies the multitasking behavior of physicians in a busy hospital emergency department.

Does Multitasking Improve Performance? Evidence from the Emergency Department

This classification groups empirical studies of multitasking performance in two settings: mobile document editing with Play Write and physician work in a hospital emergency department.

Google

Macalester College

The term multitasking (or time sharing) was first used to describe the sharing of computing processor capacity amongst a number of distinct jobs (e.g., Denning (1971)). In the workplace today, human multitasking is a natural response to the increased demand from a growing number of competing activities. 

Multitasking

- Multitasking with Play Write, a mobile microproductivity writing tool
- Does Multitasking Improve Performance? Evidence from the Emergency Department


References to related Literature

•	Several contingent tasks are performed at the same time.

•	Employees constantly switch between multiple demanding and ongoing tasks in a modern work environment, impacting productivity.

Multitasking in the workplace

Media multitasking increases media absorption by enabling students to use two or more mediums at once. As media use is largely unregulated in college, this behavior extends to this institution.

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