Digital Work Environment (DWE): Using Tasks to Organize Digital Resources

DWE is aimed at providing a one-stop access point to local and remote digital library collections, traditional in -house libraries, and most importantly, to the vast array of information resources that exists in the academic community’s local Intranet. Due to vast amount of information available and the difficulty faced by students and staff in finding the relevant resources, there is a need for a better and logical organization of these resources. DWE uses tasks as a means of directing students and staff to the relevant resources. Tasks generally play an important role in system and user interface design. Identifying the user's tasks enables the designer to construct user interfaces reflecting the tasks' properties, including efficient usage patterns, easy-touse interaction sequences, and powerful assistance features. The resources in DWE are organized according to specific tasks performed by the research students and staff in the division of information studies. The tasks and resources were elicited based on the needs of faculty and students through interviews and focus groups. This paper focuses on the task of preparing and writing a Master dissertation. It highlight the importance of task based design in assisting and helping students and instructors from the time of selecting the research project to the time of submitting the final bound copies of the dissertation.