All rights reserved. Summary Over the past two years. Understanding how applications disrupt users' work has helped us to articulate the meaning of interface transparency. Interface transparency and related concepts have previously been explored from theoretical perspectives, but have not been grounded in user data. The relationship between the user's work and interface transparency is a key element of our understanding.
Disruptive systems distract users from their task.
Systems can disrupt users by fragmenting the task into elements which do not match the user's view of the task. Insufficient functionality and awkward interface mechanisms for a particular task also disrupt users. We need to understand users' work in much richer detail than we do now in order to build systems that assist them with that work. The researcher is present during the use of the software in the context of the user's actual work setting and work task. The researcher can both observe and question the user about his or her experience with the software and its impact on their work as it unfolds.