Recent Shortcuts: Providing Quick Access to Recently Used Computer Objects to Support Shared Activities

We have designed a tool called Recent Shortcuts, which helps manage coordination by making recently used objects easily accessible. Recent Shortcuts enables quick access to files, file folders, received attachments, people, and groups of people that the user interacted with recently for re-use in the user’s current context. The design of Recent Shortcuts was informed by an empirical study of teams, which revealed the amount of extraneous work users do to coordinate with others in finding references to other people, finding files to attach to email, and managing incoming email attachments. Much of this work involves finding recently accessed objects that are needed again in the user’s current task focus. Recent Shortcuts supports this access by displaying a list of recently used objects from which users can open or copy and paste objects to include in their current task.