research-article

Agent-assisted task management that reduces email overload

Authors:

Andrew Faulring,

Bradley Schmerl,

Aaron Steinfeld,

John Zimmerman,

Asim Smailagic,

Jeffery Hansen,

Daniel SiewiorekAuthors Info & Claims

IUI '10: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Pages 61 - 70

https://doi.org/10.1145/1719970.1719980

Published: 07 February 2010 Publication History

Abstract

RADAR is a multiagent system with a mixed-initiative user interface designed to help office workers cope with email overload. RADAR agents observe experts to learn models of their strategies and then use the models to assist other people who are working on similar tasks. The agents' assistance helps a person to transition from the normal email-centric workflow to a more efficient task-centric workflow. The Email Classifier learns to identify tasks contained within emails and then inspects new emails for similar tasks. A novel task-management user interface displays the found tasks in a to-do list, which has integrated support for performing the tasks. The Multitask Coordination Assistant learns a model of the order in which experts perform tasks and then suggests a schedule to other people who are working on similar tasks. A novel Progress Bar displays the suggested schedule of incomplete tasks as well as the completed tasks. A large evaluation demonstrated that novice users confronted with an email overload test performed significantly better (a 37% better overall score with a factor of four fewer errors) when assisted by the RADAR agents.

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Cited By

Kabir KCohoon JLund JChen JMetz AWiese J(2025)Balancing Care Responsibilities with Remote WorkProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/37011829:1(1-21)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701182
Langerak TChristen SAlbaba MGebhardt CHolz CHilliges O(2024)MARLUI: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Point-and-Click UIsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36611478:EICS(1-27)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661147
Morrison KIqbal SHorvitz E(2024)AI-Powered Reminders for Collaborative Tasks: Experiences and FuturesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36537018:CSCW1(1-20)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
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Index Terms

Agent-assisted task management that reduces email overload
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
      1. Intelligent agents
      2. Multi-agent systems
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IUI '10: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

February 2010

460 pages

ISBN:9781605585154

DOI:10.1145/1719970

General Chairs:
Charles Rich
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
,
Qiang Yang
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, China
,
Program Chairs:
Marc Cavazza
Teesside University, UK
,
Michelle Zhou
IBM Research, China

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 07 February 2010

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IUI '10: 15th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

February 7 - 10, 2010

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Overall Acceptance Rate 746 of 2,811 submissions, 27%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701182
Langerak TChristen SAlbaba MGebhardt CHolz CHilliges O(2024)MARLUI: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Point-and-Click UIsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36611478:EICS(1-27)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3661147
Morrison KIqbal SHorvitz E(2024)AI-Powered Reminders for Collaborative Tasks: Experiences and FuturesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36537018:CSCW1(1-20)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3653701
Kraus MWagner NRiekenbrauck RMinker W(2023)Improving Proactive Dialog Agents Using Socially-Aware Reinforcement LearningProceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3565472.3595611(146-155)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2023
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Kwok TKiefer PRaubal M(2023)Unobtrusive interaction: a systematic literature review and expert surveyHuman–Computer Interaction10.1080/07370024.2022.216240439:5-6(380-416)Online publication date: Feb-2023
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Schacht SLanquillon CHenne SSchmid EMehlin V(2023)Kognitive AssistenzsystemeKnowledge Science – Fallstudien10.1007/978-3-658-41155-8_3(21-32)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2023
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Ahire SRohs MSimon B(2022)Ubiquitous Work Assistant: Synchronizing a Stationary and a Wearable Conversational Agent to Assist Knowledge WorkProceedings of the 1st Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work10.1145/3533406.3533420(1-9)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2022
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Linder RHunter CMcLemore JDutta SAkbar FGrover TBreideband TBorghouts JLu YMark GHenley AWilliams A(2022)Characterizing Work-Life for Information Work on MarsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34928596:GROUP(1-27)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
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Dhiman HWächter CFellmann MRöcker C(2022)Intelligent AssistantsBusiness & Information Systems Engineering10.1007/s12599-022-00743-164:5(645-665)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2022
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Azorin RGrigori DBelhajjame K(2022)A Reproducible Approach for Mining Business Activities from Emails for Process AnalyticsService-Oriented Computing – ICSOC 2021 Workshops10.1007/978-3-031-14135-5_6(77-91)Online publication date: 24-Aug-2022
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