The Hidden Cost of Window Management

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Windows 7 supports task switching through window management, revealing that it is time-consuming and identifying opportunities for design improvements to reduce overhead.

Contribution

The paper introduces a classification of task switching operations and quantifies their impact on switch time, providing insights for optimizing window management.

Findings

Task switching is time-intensive for users.

Certain window operations dominate switch time.

Opportunities exist to optimize window management for efficiency.

Abstract

Most window management systems support multitasking by allowing users to open, resize, position, and switch between application windows. Although multitasking has become a way of life for most knowledge workers, our current understanding of how users use window management features to switch between multiple tasks---which may comprise multiple application windows---is limited. In this paper, we present a study providing an in-depth analysis of how task switching is supported in Windows 7. As part of analysis, we developed an interface-agnostic classification of common task switching operations supported by window managers which can be used to quantify the time spent on each constituting action. Our study shows that task switching is a time intensive activity and highlights the dominant actions that contribute to task switch time. Furthermore, our classification highlights the specific operations that are optimized by more recent and experimental window managers and allows identifying opportunities for design that could further reduce the overhead of switching between tasks.