Task 4:
So our problem is task prioritization. There has been a few research done on this
and each with their own prioritization method. One of the prioritization methods
mentioned was dependent on the variable thresholds, and the values of the task
Parasuraman & Rovira, 2005). In a research done by Parasuraman and Rovira,
they mention something called the improved performance research integration tool (IMPRINT),
which was a network modeling tool that was designed to help evaluate actions of
human users and system technologies. The point of that research was to improve IMPRINT
and one of the improvements they suggested was task prioritization, so I thought we
could look at how they did that. They refer to task as higher priority tasks and lower
priority tasks, which allows them to determine which task they will allocate their
resources to before the others. In this study time deadline was also a part of the
factors that was taken into account, which is something we are considering for our
project.
This is a table taken from that study and I think this can help us with our project.
We can tweak the activity components a little. For example the task monitoring will
only be limited to incomplete or complete and does not include half finished or
such since we are going to only start a task that we can finish. Multitasking is
too much work! Task prioritization will definitely be the most important component.
We have to find a method that we will and stick to to determine how we will prioritize
our tasks. Since everyone has different priorities, it’s best if we assume a priority
that’s consistent. Resource allocation in our project will be only the time we spend
on each task since we are only modelling an individual person and their task. We will
not include task interruption since we will not be dealing with partially finished
tasks. Same for task resumption. Task termination will be useful to determine a task
is completed and remove it from our list of tasks, or our knowledge base.
Another research that might be useful was a study done by Rhodes and others (2019),
which focused on memory storage and prioritizing tasks. They mention something about
competing for attention, and task prioritization in another word is basically just that.
Depending on the values that we set as our priority, we will determine which task to give
our attention and time to. In the study, the way they chose which task to prioritize was
by manipulating the difficulty of each task. Difficulty will be used in our project as well.
The study mentioned something interesting that we did not previously think about,
prioritization cost and concurrent cost. Concurrent costs might not be included in
our project since we will stick to only being able to process and do one task at a time.
Prioritization cost might be important to our project but it probably will not be used
and defined the same way it was in that study. We define prioritization in this
project to be doing tasks in a certain order to ensure that we are doing the best
and maximizing our time and product, given a limited amount of time and resources.
So our prioritization cost will be time and remaining tasks?
Currently the only given resource in our project is time. Time is what we will
trade for completion of tasks. We might also want to consider having a certain
amount of time per day since time per day is not infinite and one can only spend
so much time on tasks. According to google, college students should spend
thirty hours studying a week. So we will use this as our limit per week.
So maybe 4-6 hours per day seems fair. The difficult part of our project
is determining the difficulties of each task and the deadline. We might
try to mimic the tasks we have in real life and also the time allocated
by the professor for that certain task.
Different ways to prioritize tasks:
1. Resource allocation: material, time
2. Type of task
3. Amount of attention required aka difficulty: subject, time
4. Urgency: which needs to be done first
Parasuraman, R., & Rovira, E. (2005). Workload Modeling and Workload Management:
Recent theoretical developments. https://doi.org/10.21236/ada432181
Rhodes, S., Jaroslawska, A. J., Doherty, J. M., Belletier, C., Naveh-Benjamin, M., Cowan, N.,
Camos, V., Barrouillet, P., & Logie, R. H. (2019). Storage and processing in working memory:
Assessing dual-task performance and task prioritization across the adult lifespan.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(7), 1204–1227.
https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000539